


Epoch

by BonJiro



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M, Ficlets, Fluff and Angst, I Will Go Down With This Ship, No Plot/Plotless, Shitty wizard King and Tiny Princess dealing with eachother's bullshit, Some sad bits, Some sexy bits, Tragedy/Comedy, also humour, and Zelda is a smart ass, and in general just an overall cross section of Zelgan nonsense, episodic drabbles, in which Ganondorf learns to snowboard, look at these nerds, oneshots, zelgan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 10:59:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 35,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4519329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonJiro/pseuds/BonJiro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The two of them held fast to routine, capturing their affair within hidden hours to leave it there, untouched by the rest of their days. But even the faithful ticking of the clock can become strained enough that the hands no longer move, no matter how much one might will them to, when weighed down by the gravity of what they had allowed.</p><p>[Collection of Episodic Zelgan Drabbles]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Night

The lifeless silence within the castle walls haunted her in the dead of night.

Wakeful, without the reprieve slumber would bring to a tired and tattered mind, the Princess lay draped in the false comforts of satin sheets. Quiet had come to devour the very world around her, making it seem a hollow, artificial thing; an empty stage bereft of an audience, waiting for the spotlight of the morning to revive it. Nightfall brought a subtle, sanguine madness to her heart, she found, to float pallid whispers passed pointed ears. It came trickling from the whitewashed brick and mortar, spoken softly by conscience to warn her of the unnatural and grotesque as Zelda patiently waited for such things to arise.

The embers of her fire had grown dim and weak, untended in the early morning hours as they wrought a ghostly shadow to flicker across her chambers. The air held chill enough that her breath would meet it hot, and any limb removed from the embrace of her blankets found discomfort; the darkness seeming to prickle at her tender flesh.

Even so, limply lifting her hand into the cold, Zelda would watch the back of it to ignore the disquieting sensation. The faintest spark wavered upon the triangular design, swirling and growing in strength until the light seemed to pour from her skin. Counting the seconds until they were matched by the audible fall of boots, the hopeful light would—like her embers—grow subdued, weakly wavering until it was snuffed out like a candle.

Each night she did this. Each night she listened as the silence was filled, and watched fate be callously ignored, spat on and tossed aside for a moment more. The slow creak of her doors had become a familiar thing, comforting and reliable, though it beckoned tragedy to stir. A hundred times or more he had come, precise and punctual and following the same course. Like clockwork, their sordid romance had ticked away many hours, but like the very cogs that moved faithful hands, the longer they held to it the more worn down they became. As with all things, it too would one day slow and stop, left a broken and rusted memory beyond repair.

Though she knew not when it would finally cease, the Princess both prayed for the end to come and feared each night may be their last.

The subtle click of the latch seemed to call out and invite, as much as the slow creak would protest it. His imposing silhouette as it swept toward her reticent outline looked as much a monster as it did the familiar shape of a lover, carried by timed strides—neither hurried, nor slow. The possessive scrutiny with which the fiery gold of his eyes cleaved to hers did not ask permission, but instead seemed to burn bright with the knowledge that he needn't have it.

The side of her bed was stolen, cold and lonely though it was, to accept his weight with a fond ease and drink deep of any warmth he brought to it. Where he perched, seeming so suddenly to take up all available space about her, let the glow of embers trace the lines of sinewy muscle while bathing half his stern features in the darkness still. Her gaze lingered on the exposed and thickly tanned flesh she knew so well now, it may as well have been a part of herself rather than worn on another.

Every scar, every story and tale of old that littered his flesh still... slender fingers had explored them all. Her pale lips had travelled the secret path betwixt sturdy shoulder and thick clavicle many times, straight and blunt teeth nipping the steep line of his neck to follow rhythmic pulse toward rounded ear. Zelda knew well the feeling of corded, steel-like arms wrapping around her torso to arch the small of her back and leave her at his mercy, pressed so forcefully against bare chest she swore their hearts would beat in time. She knew the rough sound of her name ground out from behind clenched teeth, and the pitching of her own breathless voice as it struggled to call his in turn.

Ever selfish, a rough and calloused hand came to hover over her side, a stifled patience in the way it drifted over curves without touch, only to curl thick fingers into the fold of her blanket. Drawing it back from her form without care for the cold he would reveal to her, it was quietly forceful; gentle and yet determined, as if there were never any choice in the matter.

Both of them knew better, but it was a lie they would happily accept.

A shiver ran through her bones as it often did, a mingling of the night's chill and the searing fire of his sweeping gaze. Zelda had long abandoned bedroom attire, forcing the habit of convenience—perhaps, within herself, she knew it would appeal to his sense of control. Vulnerable and exposed, the Princess offered no resistance though the cold clawed at pale skin, for she knew the Gerudo's warmth would soon be upon her.

But neither did she move to invite him. Never once had she made such a pivotal mistake as that, for it would require admitting to herself how desperate to keep him she'd become.

Closing crystalline eyes, she awaited his touch with a private greed, the thrill of it fluttering within her belly. Seconds passed, precious and lost once they had ticked by. It did not come. Instead, pointed ears perked to the whisper that came not of her mind, but of an enemy she had forgiven far too soon.

"Even after all this time," he began, a rueful tone slimly hidden by the low and rich timbre of his voice, "I'm still the one that must come to you."

She did not hide the small sigh that escaped her, the faintest shake of her head given as long lashes remained closed. "And it is a rare kindness on your part that I have come to cherish..."

"Or perhaps a cruelty even I could not have contrived," he offered quietly, leaning to reach of a lock of spun gold as it sat splayed across her silken pillow. "Feeding a parched man drops of water while withholding a lake."

"Would you rather I allow him to die of thirst?" Crystalline eyes opened enough to drift toward his profile, iced over with frozen emotions he would only ever be able to guess at. "If I gave any more than this, we would both have drowned long ago... You know that better than anyone, Ganondorf."

A distant stare echoed out between them, heavy with pathos and resentment, though filled with fragile things neither had the heart to truly feel. These impossibilities stalked them always, hissing at their defiance to spit poison upon whatever unnatural sensation they entertained. Its onset had been almost imperceptible, like an assiduous housekeeper dousing lanterns—it noiselessly went about and snuffed out, one by one, the mind's thousand small accesses to pleasure in the absence of the other.

There were some things a thief could never steal, nor a king conquer and take for his own. Though he could stir it up and watch it bloom from afar, tasting its sweet nectar upon her lips, she would deny him the gift of ever claiming it. Zelda knew that to give him her heart would be to invite his demons to feast upon it until nothing but a withered husk remained.

But for as long as a man still cleaved to her door in the dead of night, haunting the empty silence undefined hours often brought, her body seemed a fitting sacrifice to keep their pains at bay.

Slender fingers moved to brush the awful marking on the back of his hand—claiming him for a purpose far more sinister than these quiet moments would have her believe—as it crept toward her hair. Golden eyes strayed toward the marking on hers in turn, and knew these precious hours would soon run out. She drew his hand close to rest cold cheek upon the knuckle, and wistfully he beheld the soft lines of her face in the shadows. Slowly he drew his vision down upon her naked form, able to pluck the lithe curvature of her frame from memory though the sight was never so potent in his mind as it was laid out before him.

The Gerudo saw carved of her pale flesh the very image of her country's splendour; the fluid grace of the rivers, the pristine clarity of Lake Hylia. He saw the lush fields rolling across her toned stomach, the sands of the desert whipped about in her golden tresses, and the blue skies reaching to the furthest horizon within her eyes. Her chest risen with breath to evoke the mountains, elegant limbs like the forest trees.

He knew as well as she did this would not last, doomed to be buried beneath old habits and greater callings, even as crimson locks tumbled from his shoulders to surround her beautiful face. He knew it was the greatest sin to brush his lips against hers like he did, dragging his bones atop her fragile form with want.

But entwined within the drum-beat strains of their sordid and bleak passions, strokes taken as naturally as a ticking clock, they did not think of the painful consequences time spent this way would cost them when it finally ran out.

They only knew that lost time could never be found again.


	2. Books

The library was a somewhat removed yet welcoming place to her eye, filled with the lukewarm camber of twilight as it filtered softly through high windows. The musty smell of old parchments was a rich thing, familiar and expected, as it boasted of the many tomes to be found here.

Between the two of them—she, an avid reader since childhood with habit drawn from many a tale, and he, not able to indulge his love affair with the written word quite so frequently—the Princess and the Gerudo had found themselves occupied quickly within the grand chamber, each settling in with a glass of brandy to a comfortable reticence.

Coming to the end of her chapter, Zelda absent-mindedly reached for her glass, skimming the last few words before turning her attention to the drink in full with a soft closing of leather bound covers. She smiled to herself as she brought the drink close, admiring the colour; rich and earthy as it was.

Flicking a glance to her only company, a lonesome figure cut of him as he reclined uncomfortably in an armchair slightly too small for his frame, Zelda found the brandy somewhat resembled the colour of his eyes when bathed in the shadows of some night born tryst.

Though his own book was still in hand as golden eyes perused it with care, his gaze was prone to darting upward and checking on her occasionally, if only to steal a glance of the serene beauty she wielded when taken by some whimsical novella. Not even a minute passed before he caught her idle stare, a crimson brow arched upon weathered features, and a small slip of laughter left her throat as she held her glass high in silent toast.

"You always look so cranky and nonplussed when you read, you know." she smiled at him, tilting her head slightly in an almost lazy fashion as she considered him. "It's a very fine line between seeming like you've been offended by something written, or simply that you're growing rusty in your Hylian and can't quite make out what it says."

A patient grimace took to forming creases at either side of his mouth as his brows twitched to show some annoyance. "Perhaps if your father had seen fit to stock a more  _varied_  array of literature, I might not have to resort to such pitiful stocks of bigoted rubbish passing itself for 'poetry'. Quite frankly, Princess, written Hylian is as versatile and beautiful as a fingerless carpenter making three legged chairs."

With a light rolling of crystalline eyes, the Princess waved a hand dismissively and brought her glass close to her lips. "You know very well we have a section of imported Gerudo works. If you miss your mother tongue, why not seek out something there instead of berating the rest of the collection?"

A sharp snap saw his own book closed in one deft motion as he leaned forward in his seat, eyeing her closely as the tome was gestured her way in point. "Have you even read a single one of them?"

"Of course I have." She avoided his gaze, swirling her brandy.

"Recommend one." He challenged, golden eyes narrowing.

Tapping a fingernail upon the smooth surface of her glass, Zelda offered a coy and somewhat haughty smile and sweetly gave him a title. " _Ikaarti du sin esta dorfesi_ ; the tale of the Two Kings."

A shadow of anger swept across his face to bring out the scowl he so often wore, and with the slightest hint of disgust, he chastised her with a sneer.

"That's a children's story." He hissed low; offended that she would suggest it at all—more than that, he was also somewhat disappointed she had indeed read one, even if it was childish fiction. As a bitter aside, leaning back into his seat, he chided, "…And your accent is terrible."

To his chagrin, Zelda only returned him with a charmed—if not amused—smile. A slight twinkle shone in her eye, before she dropped it to her drink. "Nobody in the castle was really familiar enough with the Gerudo tongue to correct me, I'm afraid. In fact, it was a scullery maid who taught me to read it at all… I spent hours with her here, when we both ought to have retired to bed. Anadoora, her name was… she had hair almost as red as yours."

A long moment of silence passed, and the fond sparkle in her gaze dimmed into something distant and regretful. The Gerudo watched her as the subtle changes shifted within her, his own frustrations softening some when he heard the name. Doubtless, the maid had been of watered down blood, and so much of the majesty of his language would've been lost on her as well. It pained him, in a way, to be reminded of the fact that his tongue and teeth were raised to grow around and form the sounds of a dead language.

But finally, with a light shake of her head, the Princess returned her attention to him.

"Perhaps you could read a few of them to me. You could certainly improve upon what she taught me, given we both knew only enough to read the old wives' tales... Then I might not be resigned to simple  _children's stories_." She shot him a daring look, knowing he was as likely to accept the offer as spit poison at her and storm away.

It did not go amiss, and a cynical smirk took him over as Ganondorf gave the frail girl a once over, double checking her intentions. "It has been some time since I have had to make sense of the scribblings your people claim as an artful language… a refresher course for the both of us may not go astray, Zelda." He conceded it in a victorious manner, as if she had begged him to learn.

"Then I might be able to tell you, in the most colourful Hylian possible, how  _lackluster_  your collection truly is." He chuckled wryly, and his grin revealed how much pleasure he would take in such a thing.

"Only to be chastised for your bad taste in your own mother tongue, no less." She chortled over the rim of her glass, taking a long draught of it and letting the warmth coat her tongue with satisfaction.

"And by that point, Princess," he offered, running a hand through unbound crimson locks and rising to fetch something from the section in question, "Your accent had better be as good as mine."

 


	3. Scales and Arpeggios

Bathed in sunlight as she sat upon the windowsill, here was something strangely distant about the way satin gloved fingers plucked fragile notes from the lyre that caught the Gerudo by surprise. The melody haunted rounded ears as it lilted between them a mystery—so very familiar, it seemed to caress the brick and mortar of castle walls, drawing from them the bittersweet whisper of an ancient memory long lost.

Yet no matter what tune the Princess sweetly coaxed from its strings, his ear was enamoured to such sounds as much as his golden eyes seemed, in those moments, enthralled with the very shape of her. Where before the music she sat a hollow fixture of her father's things, Zelda's pale skin gained glow and her cheeks seemed richer for the lightest pink to grace them in concentration; long lashes closed to his stare.

She excelled without effort, it seemed, as she did many other intellectual—and perhaps, more pressingly— _artistic_  pursuits.

He did not, though his tongue was quick to say otherwise when crystalline eyes had flashed his way.

Swallowing against a dry throat, the very last note gently floated away and the Princess' head lifted with some serene finality. Ganondorf was keenly aware of the coming silence and the expectancy it brought as his gaze wandered to the ivory keys beside him in turn.

No sooner had an unsure glance graced the piano did Zelda's attention shift to him, drawing his gaze back toward a modest smile.

"Not my best rendition, I'm afraid..." she offered humbly, lowering her instrument to rest upon her lap. Tilting her head, long lashes blinked once, studying the Gerudo before her with benign curiosity. "But, the piano does afford some flexibility. Perhaps you could do it better justice."

Thick fingers twitched upon biceps nervously, and defensive now, he kept bulky arms crossed tight across his chest to send her a scowl.

"And I suppose you were expecting some grand performance in return for that paltry effort?" he hissed, crimson brows knitting together to darken his worn features further.

Her pleasant demeanour did not falter, not a flinch nor twitch of her brow, and he had to credit her for that.

Tossing his gaze away from her, the Gerudo would scoff and dismiss, waving a belittling hand at her. "I am not here for your entertainment. Play your pretty little harp if you desire, Princess, it won't draw my quill any closer to signing your father's treaty. I require substance and action, not a show of frills and niceties."

She seemed to consider him a moment, thoughtfully smoothing the crinkles from the folds of her dress as she did, and with a small chuckle, her smile grew.

"You can't play, can you?"

Whipping his head back to stare at her, tussled crimson flicked behind as golden eyes widened; affronted. With a snarl he set about her, determined to squash the truth before any embarrassment could come of it.

"I don't see what my musical inclinations have to do with anything! You're the one who insists upon wasting my time each day in this manner!" teeth clenched tight about the words, lending a snap to his low toned growl as he stared her down with intensity enough to set her ablaze. "When your father insisted I keep company with you, I had thought the Bearer of Wisdom might make for a more stimulating acquaintance than some gussied-up  _bard_!"

To the flare of his temper, renowned and dangerous though she knew it to be, Zelda's smile swiftly turned into a grin. Slimly hidden behind gloved fingertips, her laughter was barely stifled—perhaps a few squeaks to sharpen murderous leers. The Princess could see the Gerudo's teeth grinding, corded muscle winding tight with either the want to strike her or simply storm away in fury.

He was so like a child, sometimes, her mind could scarcely accept the possibility of severe repercussions in raising his ire.

And like any child in the midst of a tantrum, she soothed with a mothering voice; soft and considerate as she gently reached to touch his trembling arm.

"Ganondorf, you've stayed here nearly a month now, and every day I see you staring at that piano. Not once have you ever touched it. If you had the passion for it like you've claimed, I'd have heard you play already... instead, I watch you sit here day after day, wondering what it may sound like beneath your fingers yet too fearful to touch the keys and make a fool of yourself."

Somehow, without his realising it, the Princess had come closer as she spoke. It's onset had been nearly imperceptible, the way he suddenly found her seated beside him, surreptitiously floating across from her windowsill to join him upon the bench; ready to play and lyre left behind.

His scowl faltered when finally the satin of her glove brushed his tanned flesh, slowly melting his anger down to reforge of it some sceptical and cynical bemusement.

"But, I think it's far more foolish to shy away from a challenge for dignity, rather than try to meet it and fail." She smiled up at him with the same glow she held when last music had filled the air, and her crystalline eyes seemed to shimmer with all the majesty of Lake Hylia on a summer's day.

"After all, mastery is born of failure, and the tenacity to keep refining one's skill in order to avoid it. Don't you think so, Ganondorf?"

He traced the soft lines of face in silent question, ever paranoid of his dealings with the crafty girl, but if he saw in her any sliver of trickery, the odd sensation trailing his spine quickly doused such hateful flames. He could not deny himself the mastery of anything, truly, once his interest had been piqued...

But then, perhaps he knew she spoke of much more than simple scales and arpeggios.

"I suppose it has... been a while since last I played the piano." he conceded slowly, careful to protect his pride and conceal a liar's tongue. Even as he did so, he felt a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "My skills may indeed have grown somewhat rusted with time and neglect."

"We'll start at the beginning then, shall we?" she saw through his deception with the same saccharine smile she always had.

A click of his tongue, and the smirk went unabated. "As you wish, Princess."

 


	4. Puppet Strings

The cracks in her porcelain skin unmade her, betraying him at a glance.

Zelda—to any other eye that may grace her as she was—had been reduced to a twisted shell of herself; her soul snatched away by a thief in the night. Her once beauteous looks were broken up by linear designs, the magical claws tearing at her flesh, reaching out from a hellish place of anguish and despair. It was a half-world, malformed and forgotten, from which such taint stemmed still. It had tasted her once, and though the light would ever remain a cage to hold it back, within her a seed of darkness bloomed in the shadows of a heavy heart.

Some may call it possession of a sort, allowing the twilight dipped hand of a demon to reach forth and grab you. Zelda preferred to think of it as a prisoner allowed to roam the prison yard, glimpsing the world outside their bars before being returned to their cell.

Crystalline eyes gleamed golden in the reflection of her shared form, and though she looked outward, he seemed to be looking in. A smile twisted her lips to move of their own accord, drawing back to reveal pearly teeth. They seemed somehow sharpened when he wore them, she found, honing the edges of her being to forge a mixture of their preferences.

The reflection smiled at her with a quiet and controlled flare, something haughty and hungry, greedy like a child spying a sweet but worn with all the lustful fancy of men. The Princess could almost taste his tongue where hers would be, earthy and weighed down with an accent foreign to lips, but so familiar to her ears.

From her throat thrummed the deep and resounding approximation of his tone, as best as her vocal cords could muster, strained beneath his will to form the sound befitting him.

"I cannot help but notice, Princess," she watched the corner of her mouth tip to smirk, and grew unsure of whom it belonged to. "That these visitations you allow me have been increasing in frequency, since the Hero went astray…"

Borrowed eyes flashed an unruly shade of hellfire as they descended upon the mirrored form of her, garbed in a cotton slip—she had drawn herself from bed and fitful slumber, beckoned by need and habit. She was forced to follow where his gaze would roam, tracing the curvature of her lithe frame.

When first she felt the Gerudo seeping into her flesh once more, he had taken her in full, resigning her back into the very corners of her own mind—he had been free to roam, and she had taken up imprisonment for it, confined within her own body. Zelda had watched him from within, silently observing the unadulterated nature of the man, growing used to his mannerisms. She knew intimately now his step, the gestures of his idle hands, the tics and itches and wants of her enemy. She had tasted the foods he favored, and the brandy he preferred over wine, sweet of tooth and partial to blood as he was.

He had perused her form, standing Zelda's body naked before this very mirror then, and took stock of Hyrule's most famed beauty with a discerning eye. Zelda had followed his gaze as it drank her in, every inch of her pale skin scanned with bitter curiosity.

The Princess knew she possessed neither the ample bosom nor the rolling hips he was accustomed to, spoiled for choice and beauty in his desert home of old. Her snowy silken flesh was not the copper toned steel Ganondorf had known all his life. Her eyes were not the piercing stare of a spirited and harshly tempered warrior. Her hair was soft and swayed with every subtle movement, without the coarse thickness a harsh sun would impose and the grit of sand to pollute it. She had been alien to him then, examined and turned about for inspection, stolen hands gingerly smoothing over her own features and through blonde tresses.

But he had grown lonesome in her form, bored and weary of it, once every facet of it had been studied and judged accordingly. The Gerudo had wandered her home next, exploring the castle much as he had its Princess, and no more than three days had rolled by before inward he turned to release her from such chains.

Zelda had banished him in anger that day, fearful and defensive, to cast him back from whence he came; paranoid of his influence. But much the same as he—having felt the ache of being so restrained and cut off from the world she knew—empathy and understanding had left her heart open to him.

And slowly, she had allowed him to return to her, answering his voice when it echoed forth in her mind at first and letting the rest of him join her in time. Hours she had spent locked away in her bedchambers, eyes closed to the world and silent, to converse with a split mind. She glimpsed him now in her dreams, crimson hair free and tussled over his broad shoulders, scarred skin as familiar to her as her own now. They had discovered one another in ways which others simply could not perceive or compare with, bleeding into each other as the months had passed by and learning the strained comfort to be stolen by such contact.

They fed each other memories and stories, drank deep of the history they shared and grew to be more of themselves within the other's presence. Light met the darkness, and now each stood in a secluded grey, basking in the twilight of each other.

The mirror was a fitting messenger—two sides of the same coin indeed.

A few moments had passed since he'd spoken, and Zelda felt the taste of him dim enough to lend her own voice back to her.

"I allow them as you request them, Ganondorf." She mused quietly, offering the mirror a pleasantly coy smile. "Link will forge his own path as he needs to, now, seeking a new destiny to replace the one he has spent… as will I."

Slender fingers twitched by her sides, idle as his spirit seeps to them; the darkness in her blood bringing a tingle to the flesh. They fanned out to flex, as if the Gerudo is testing her frail hands and comparing them to his own larger, calloused grip. Her fingertips brush her thighs, sweeping upward in a slow and intimate caress, bringing with them the soft fabric she has draped them in. Zelda relishes the feeling of it, knowing that this sensation is a shared experience.

His voice breaks away from her lips once more, harsh against her throat but filtered through a chuckle. "I don't imagine you would've married either way, Princess… but it is flattering, I suppose, that I've cemented such a stance."

Zelda watched the flash of gold in her eyes and smiled, giving no protest as he guided her hands and hem upward with agonizing patience. A hitch of laughter came of it as he passed her hip, ticklish, and neither of them could be certain as to whom the sensation belonged.

"I can see quite clearly what  _stance_   _you're trying to cement_ , Ganondorf." The Princess smirked, and enjoying the little game, flicked her hands away to allow the slip to fall and cover once more. "…and  _I_  don't imagine you'd allow a husband to take the same liberties, even if I chose to have one."

A shock flew through her in response, arching her back with the sweet promise of it, and sucking a breath through straight teeth, the cracks upon her flesh grew more pronounced. Zelda felt her senses haze, stripped of some control and pushed further back into her own mind—not unlike the first few days she had spent with him this way.

She felt her face shift to form a grin, evil and filled with wanton intentions, as he allowed her head to loll forward and stare into the mirror one more. Her hands were his again, and he did not restrain himself nor did he allow her to stifle his movements as he tore the sleeves from her delicate shoulders, the slip falling away from her slim form. She shivered somewhere within, and he drew dark delight from it, letting Zelda see herself through his eyes as he drew her—his—hands to trace her curves in full.

"They could take every liberty you could offer them…" he purred, drawing out the low tones of his voice by gravelling her own, twisting the sound into a symphony that befit them in that moment. "…but  _no_  man could yield such reward from it as you and I do now…  _Zelda_."

And as the Princess felt her own fingertips guided through the light tangle of modesty betwixt trembling thighs, teasing the tender flesh there with an expertise far outweighing what she could ever command of them herself, she found she couldn't help but agree.

Ganondorf was the only one who knew just how to pull his puppet's strings to her liking, and Zelda could only twist and twirl to the passionate rhythms he produced.

 


	5. Smirthereens

Sometimes, they returned to her in flashes, born of a familiar glance or a fleeting dream.

Smithereens of the eras long dead, these broken pieces of her past lives—beyond number and blurred together now—found their way slowly into the pockets of her mind. She plucked them tentatively from the shadows to admire them, curious and eager as always.

Zelda had gathered many memories, be they present or cloaked in the mists of history, and all had their place within the puzzle of her being. Each of them fit neatly among the others, ordered in sets and neat rows of progression. She had made a habit of matching them together, stitching them up like patchwork rags until the comforting quilts of entire lifetimes could be draped around her shoulders; protection from the chilling unknowns left in between.

The Princess had watched the march of progress, and learned well the consequences of error, from within the sanctuary of a mind blessed with Wisdom. Hyrule had watched a child blossom into a woman, her lithe body gaining height and curve to ghost her mother's beauty, ignorant of how far beyond her apparent years Zelda's knowledge stretched. A fine ruler had been forged for them in holy fires, the ethereal flame that her inherited soul was. Soon she stood a fitting Queen to their eyes, when finally her figure seemed to keep better pace with her mind.

Still she collected these private facets of herself, content with the orderly and predictable fashion with which they would present themselves.

It was in her twenty second year of life the first anomaly came, stark against the irenic mosaic of memory she had known thus far.

It had startled her at first, foreign and harsh against her mental palette, tasting of ash and blood and wine. Crystalline eyes had wavered upon the rim of the offending glass, eyeing the drink as if it may have been poisoned and wondering if the cork had spoilt its savour. The cacophony of polite conversation fell deaf upon pointed ears, dinner growing cold on her plate, as she felt the isolating stab of grief. No sooner had a lord in company grown concerned with the streaked powder of her cheeks, marred by silent tears, did Zelda remove herself to retire early.

The confusion of her courtiers paled in comparison to her own as the gleam of armour in her halls grew suddenly painful to her eye, haunting the course of a hasty retreat.

In the weeks that passed, these bleak colours stained the usual vibrancy of her tapestries in the halls with sorrow, washing out the victories displayed there as if they were naught but shallow lies. The flicker of torchlight sent a paranoid shiver down her spine, threatening to flare in anger and burn down the comfort of these walls. She locked her vanity draw and threw the key beneath her bed, wary of her gold and gems for the greedy glint they gained, as if reflecting a hidden thief's eye.

More and more, a new set of smithereens began slipping themselves into her pockets, seeking the tender patchwork she had bestowed upon the rest. Fearful of what her mental needlework would reveal, the Queen avoided the task at first, until one day she awoke to find the first few patches had knitted themselves together on her behalf. The crease of such fabric formed a smirk she knew all too well, yet couldn't quite place—it echoed from not one, but  _many_  lifetimes.

It bore the barest glint of canines, dark skin accentuating the pearly white teeth within, controlled with a dark delight for the secrets it held. The rumbling chuckle echoed in her mind a sinister and troubling thing, yet the danger of it seemed to coax her buried curiosity back into the open, careful and alert like a deer wandering from the tree line.

The Queen was no longer afraid, but  _intrigued,_ and taking up the thread of Wisdom she tended to long forgotten rags.

Each sliver a jagged edge, she found, slicing through the tender mortal flesh she was wrought of, were she careless with them. Some would take on an intimate and silken texture, when she stopped every once in a while to view her work, running her fingertips over it with bemusement. Others halted her progress, so coarse the were as sandpaper, rough and stiff to remove the sheen of her find. There were shapes that frightened her, jolting her bones to leave them brittle and her form frail, sapping the very light from her skin should she handle them too long.

Slowly but surely, this Acheronian quilt came about, though it was not around her shoulders that it was to be draped.

The silhouette of corded muscle filled it soon enough, born of shadow and hellfire, betraying the familiar shape of a man who seemed to wear it with perverse pride.

Tanned and battle scarred, her eye was enthralled and repulsed by the exotic skin that began to wander naked across her dreams. Fitful slumbers tore ragged breath from her lips as she tossed and turned, unaware of the gossip amongst her handmaidens. Some said the Queen was running, strained as a demon gave chase in the night, sending her barefoot into a labyrinth of madness. Others whispered of an imaginary lover, born of the unmarried Queen's loneliness as she spent more and more time locked away in her rooms, her gasps in the night hinting of fantasy born trysts.

As Zelda stitched the fraying hems, she found her thread replaced by crimson stands of hair. As her needle wove in and out of misery and ecstasy, golden eyes watched her fingers work, demanding and expectant. She worked with mechanical precision, unable to stop as the smirk beckoned her onward and the scowl threatened grave consequence should she cease.

The Queen mused to herself in the darkness now, holding one sided conversations with the shadows of her chambers to all that overheard it. She chortled to the silence as if she found it all amusing. She sobbed and pleaded with it when overworked and tired. She sighed and shook her head, lightly chastising the unwanted opinions of a ghost. She spat poison and paced her rooms, arguing with no one. She lay cradled upon her bed amongst tussled sheets, nearly falling off the edge of it as if somebody had stolen the rest.

Hyrule mourned the loss of its ruler, possessed by madness as she seemed to be, her wisdom unravelled and strewn about underfoot in piles of tangled yarn.

Such a shock it was to the faithful handmaiden, drawing back the Queen's curtains one fateful morning to find her Majesty tangled in bedsheets that did not belong to her, soundly sleeping in the arms of a King.

Sometimes, they returned to her in flashes.

Once, they returned to her in full.

 


	6. Peanut Butter

The Princess held a habit of sneaking out of her chambers in the night, wandering the lonely halls of the castle alone to seek amusements she could not afford during the day.

There was a certain mysticism to it, as if she entered another world—the quiet calm, the empty halls, the sensation of bare feet upon the carpet runners, the dim flicker of torchlight to cast a timeless glow upon the tapestries and portraits of her forebears. As the castle slept, Zelda had quietly forged a contained world of her own, and it was a private freedom she treasured.

She found she needed these small escapes from the routine and structure of her day; little snippets of spontaneity keeping her sane and allowing her to regain some control over her affairs. Zelda chose to indulge herself in things she might otherwise miss, making the time for guilty pleasures and little secrets to enter her life. Some nights she would spend in the libraries, undisturbed as she poured over neglected pages, locking away every story of the past. Others, she wandered the gardens to enjoy the peaceful view of the town below, the moonlit fields gently swept by a cooling breeze as the stars shone above, unbridled in their glory.

This night, she would sneak into the kitchens with a prize in mind, an old childhood favourite that she seldom tasted any more. She knew now, after many nights of searching, exactly which cupboard held the jar she sought. Zelda never took much, for a finger scoop was all she was likely to get away with lest the head cook catch onto her pilfering.

But a taste was all she needed.

Her fingers gave a small twitch as they reached for the handle, the anticipation of her treat weighing heavily in the back of her mind—one day, the Princess may well be brave enough to abscond with the entire jar of peanut butter, hiding it in her chambers and feasting upon it daily. Her tongue pressed to her upper lip, she was the very image of concentration, as if even removing it was a task of great risk. She was stealthy even now, though Zelda had grown confident she would not be caught. Her methods were water tight, nobody in the castle could've been aware of her thieving ways...

Or so she thought.

The cupboard door was slowly pulled aside to avoid the creak of it, crystalline eyes moving to the place she knew it would be, but when she found nothing, delicate features fell into a look of childlike shock and despair.

_Gone._

Slender brows quickly knit themselves into a bemused, though determined frown. Her arm shot wantonly into the darkness of the shelves, rummaging for the sweetly familiar feeling of glass. A bag of flour was roughly pushed aside, sprigs of dried herbs batted about as they got in her way, but still the Princess found nothing.

It was then that the rich rumbling of a chuckle sounded behind her, and Zelda's blood ran cold—not for the knowledge that she'd been caught, but out of all in the castle to witness it, it simply had to be him.

The Princess cursed under her breath as she heard him speak, unwilling as yet to face him and see the awful smirk.

"So there is a rat in the kitchen, after all..." the intruder purred softly, an amused tone lacing his words as his tongue clicked. "And here I thought Hylian women prized thin waists."

Settling a hand on the handle once more, slender fingers would tighten to take out some of her frustration upon it. Instinct had the Princess biting the inside of her cheek to stay any barbs she might return to him, but here, they were far from her father's ear. Her head whipped to one side, sending the silhouette of him an icy, sidelong glare.

"I would ask,  _Lord Dragmire,_ " it slipped away from her as something of a low hiss, dripping with sarcasm, "What business  _you_  would have to be awake in the witching hour, though instinct informs me the question answers itself."

Zelda had held a strange distaste for her father's advisors since childhood, but none more so than the Gerudo leaning casually against the bench behind her at present. There was a chill to his aura that she never did trust, and his ability to simply appear beside her at any given moment did nothing to ease the sensation. Even in the darkness of the kitchen, the gold of his eyes shone clearly, as if illuminated by sempiternal flames.

A tilt of his head saw crimson locks tumbled from his shoulder as he regarded her for a moment, that awful gaze flicking over her form in silent appraisal. Ganondorf found it mildly curious that the Princess, for all her rigid propriety during the day, did not move to cover herself from a man's eye while she was caught in nothing but her night slip. Perhaps she had forgotten the fact, distracted by the sudden realisation of company.

She, too, took note of the difference in attire, dressed only to move about in his chambers—the tanned flesh of his arms and chest exposed, burdened by scars and foreign ink her sight struggles to perceive in the dim light. Cotton pants bore red and blue designs on the knees she recognised immediately as Gerudo. It was odd that, even divested of the armour Zelda had never seen him out of, the man lost none of his imposing stature.

Then she spotted it as he shifted slightly, the moonlight from the window catching the glass to shimmer in his hand—the jar.

The sight drew her slowly to turn, facing him as crystalline eyes returned to gold, issuing a silent challenge. Ganondorf did not miss the subtle change in her either, as the smirk slowly grew upon his lips.

"You are not the only one in the castle who indulges midnight snacking, Princess." he offered then, lifting the jar before him and inspecting it with mild interest. "I had wondered, on the first few times I saw you skulking about, what it was that drew you back so frequently." he paused, quirking a fiery brow toward her with perverse satisfaction. "Do you recall, while we hosted the Labrynnian emissary, the dish we ate at the reception dinner? I believe it was cucco, roasted and served in... what did they call it? Ah, yes..."

He feigned his ignorance, drawing it slowly out while the Princess' cold eyes watched like a hawk. His hand moved to dip one finger into the paste, gathering a dollop of it and holding it up to the moonlight.

"... _Satay_ , I believe." the haughty smirk finally cracked into a grin, indulgent and sinful a curve as he could make. "I did find it rather to my liking." and that said, he would punish her, stealing her rightful helping and plunging it greedily into his mouth.

The Princess had seen enough. No sooner had the Gerudo Lord licked the last morsel from his finger, her strides had closed the distance between them with haste. Blonde hair whipped about behind her in a determined sway, and coming to a halt no more than a foot from where he leaned, Zelda would glare fiercely up at the man who effortlessly towered over her own small frame. Her hand was levelled toward him sternly, palm up and ready to receive as she gave command with all the royal authority her voice could muster at this time of night.

"This is your first, and  _only_ , warning. I will not sit idly by and watch you take and defile what is rightfully mine. Do not test me." lifting her chin, her eyes would narrow into deadly slits. "If you wish to steal from me; if you attempt to lord your takings over me, I will fight you for them. I will not hesitate but to pursue any and every means necessary to see them returned to me. I am the Princess of Hyrule, and I will bring armies against you for such treason. You  _will_  fall, and then, I will take up whatever you leave behind and add it to my own; a penalty for your  _selfishness._ "

Taken aback by such a thing—a dangerous speech to hear from her, while he did indeed hold dark intentions to do as she described—the Gerudo's brow would rise. He had never heard her speak so brazenly, so forcefully, within his presence before. The Princess had spent much of his time in her family's service evading him, and it was only now he realised it may not have been fear that kept her at such a distance.

No, he could see it in her eyes, catching the camber of moonlight to bore crisply into his own...

She knew he could not be trusted, and Ganondorf would not succeed in distracting her from that suspicion. He knew that she would make good on her threats one day, a potent enemy, if he was not careful.

But for the moment, she was simply a girl sneaking into the kitchens at night to avoid her father's scolding, and for that fact, the Gerudo was grateful.

"...Now, surrender my peanut butter, Ganondorf."

 


	7. Secrets

He had grown used to the sour taste of dank air, thick and coarse to breathe as it served to lend the darkness some sick sense of tangibility. The cold had dared to sink its fangs into tanned flesh, seeping in with the hope of removing all memory of the sun's warmth. Time itself, aligned with Heroes as it was, sat aside and watched with a bitter smirk as its presence became no more than a mirage to his senses.

The Gerudo glared into the shadows of this insulting cell all the same, chained by mystified silver as the golden crucible of his eyes beckoned things far more hellish to come.

His soul could not be held by bars of steel, even in such a weakened state, for long... and when again, he was free, his jailers would know a fate even he deemed too distasteful to contemplate aloud.

Against the droll echo of some distant drip, the creak of metal doors could be heard; a hurried thing followed by surreptitious footsteps. A moment more and fire would spark to flare, cleaving the darkness before settling into a balefully flickering glow.

Porcelain features were illuminated to his eye, half bathed in the warm orange light—how fitting, too, that the other half of her visage would be consumed by shadow still. A smirk formed briefly upon his own worn face, thin lipped and cynical, though it vanished before she would witness it.

Each step toward a caged beast was a daring one, she knew, but the Princess did not falter in her stoic strides until she was but a hair's breadth from his door. The Gerudo's gaze traced her movements closely, crimson brows knit as ever into a fierce scowl, though he said nothing to her show of bravery... or foolishness.

Well-timed silence is often the most commanding of expressions, he had found.

A terse reticence reigned for a what seemed a small eternity, crystalline eyes tinted an icy shade violet as she beheld his chained form without any visible hint of amusement. A click of her tongue would move that glass like jaw only a fraction, and Zelda's words seemed to slither forth like a desert cobra's venom.

"All my life I have been the sort of person in whom people confide." she began slowly, bitterly wrapping teeth around the sounds to hiss. "And all my life I have been flattered by that role, grateful for the leverage that comes with receiving important information. Recently, however, I have noticed that my satisfaction has thinned... replaced by a strange, though quietly kept, indignation."

Her head would tilt ever so slightly to regard him through the bars, a satin gloved hand rising to grip one tightly as she drew impossibly closer. "Do you know why this is?"

Biting down his his tongue, Ganondorf was quick to consider that this was a rhetorical question, but when it came to the Princess, he often could not tell. There were certain people in whom you could detect the seeds of madness-seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, sheltered lives. Zelda could function perfectly well in her contained world, but but it was not difficult to see, when he stepped forward as the catalyst that threatened to drown it in chaos, how her potential for insanity might have been awakened.

"I expect you will inform me either way, Princess." he spat, the usually rich timbre he bore marred by thirst to form a gritty rumbling. "Far be it from you to leave me sitting wakeful and alone without something  _profound_ to contemplate."

But there it was again, as always; the perverse refusal to acknowledge his hostility. She seemed to him like the waters of Lake Hylia; nothing could disturb the calm of her surface. Snide comments and bitter jokes disappeared soundlessly into her depths, leaving not so much as a ripple upon her visage.

Zelda would incline her head with the briefest quirk to her lips, intent on continuing as he'd guessed. "They tell me because they regard me as safe, Ganondorf. You of all people should have learned the error in that, by now." The ghosted smile finally cracked to flash the white of her teeth, returned to the sneer he sent her in response.

She had expected as much, as the Princess watched the fires of his gaze flare—it was a familiar thing to her, and far easier to deal with. She had spent lifetimes battling his rage and his malice... he could not catch her off guard as he had in the months prior.

Her hand would slip then from the bar, settling upon the locking mechanism with a graceful flick of her wrist to twist the key. "In fact, you were just the same as the rest... Making their disclosures to me in the same spirit that they might confess a sin..." the cell door welcomed her inward, swaying back and out of the way of its own accord, as if it feared the woman who dared to enter. "...The notion that I am so outside the loop, so remote from the doings of the great world as I sit tucked safely behind castle walls, as to be defused of any possible threat."

Zelda saw the twitch of his muscles as the Gerudo tensed to such intrusion, the brightness of the torch she held stinging his eyes to behold. The gentle sway of her skirts seemed to defy the sodden sound of her steps against the stone. A snarl was given as she knelt down before him, the rattle of chains betraying the tremor in his hands—the want to strike down capricious snake, no doubt, worn features darkened into a murderous leer the likes of which would terrify even the hardiest of knights.

"But we know better, don't we, Ganondorf? I am the keeper of many secrets... nobody truly expects me to have room for any of my own." That saccharine smile coated her lips, those devil lips he knew well the taste of, as they came close enough that a tilt of her head would see them graze his own. "Not even  _you._ This is the real source of my dismay, you see..."

The Gerudo King's jaw clenched tightly as he traced the thin outline of her nose, his gaze slowly descending to her mouth—had he known such a thing would haunt him so, he would never have gambled so brazenly.

"When I walk out of this place, and believe me, Princess, I  _will..._ " he seethed, his eyes snapping up to capture hers once more. "I'll be sure to correct such an oversight, and when I do, you will have nothing to offer me as a lover that I cannot simply take as an enemy. Being told secrets is not, and never has been, a sign that you belong or that you matter, Zelda. In those shared between us, it is quite the opposite—simply confirmation of your irrelevance."

Her smile faded, and a cruel smirk was given in turn as the Gerudo hissed his own venom.

"You have me chained for exposing my intentions, evidence gleaned through an intimate proximity with my person; I commend you for that. I did indeed underestimate the threat you could be, but in capturing me now, you've thrown the opportunity away far too soon." he chuckled low, and the Princess drew back to stand over him, his eyes rising to keep hold of hers. "You seem to understand that our 'romance' was a mutual pact of delusion. It should be clear that, at it's end, there's nothing left to bargain with. You'll have no more secrets from me, Zelda... and now, you've revealed yours."

The Princess lingered but a moment more, turning on her heel with all the icy stoicism he'd come to expect of her. "If that bolsters your confidence, then keep telling yourself that. Repeat it here in the dark, until you feel utterly convinced, if you like... but when you do walk out of here, you will do so a lonely man that should learn to better mind the gap between his dreams and his reality."

He watched in sneering silence as she walked away, leaving him to the fate she described as the last of her voice echoed out against the drip—that long haul drip of utter solitude, boasted many hours alone with the still fresh memories of what her company could bring...

"We are bound by the secrets we share, Ganondorf, but it's the ones we keep from ourselves that undo us in the end."

 


	8. Writing Tragedies

The Princess' habit of reading often isolated her.

Tucked away with old tomes, neatly hidden within the labyrinthian aisles of a grand royal archive, Zelda enjoyed a rare and immaculate shimmer of anonymity. She, since the time when her first abecedarian pursuits had opened her eyes to a world of history and fantasy alike, found sanctuary upon the pages unlike any place or person in the castle could have offered her.

As the girl had gained height, so too had she gained ethical and intellectual integrity, tempered by every word she had studied and reflected upon while alone.

In such younger years, Zelda had been vain of the wider knowledge she acquired from the perusal of many subjects. Her mind had been sharpened early, and the contempt she felt for the historical error and other assorted foolishness that was often spouted by her father's numerous courtiers often went unhidden.

It became a common complaint that she, the budding image of an unwed shrew, was conceited; though she did indeed excel, she did so in many matters deemed unimportant by the gentry.

Those things she offered that were of importance came to be dismissed alongside them—so young and inexperienced as yet, they would snidely ask what the girl's supposed Wisdom was truly worth.

By the time she had grown into her figure, the Princess had also grown into her sense humour, finding she held a knack for saying bitter things that caught those around her rawly. She said them in spite, to draw some amusement from those who would still regard the woman as they did the child, and held little care for how much sting was carried in the tail end of her arguments.

Zelda's victims regarded her with active dislike, though she felt it was they who had offended her firstly. The early humiliation received at the hands of her father and his cohorts had caused in her a shrinking of her fuller self from her peers, and it was doubtful she would ever overcome it. She found herself alienating the sympathy of her handmaidens and the other ladies of nobility who tried in earnest to reach out to her.

The wife of an advisor had attempted to take the girl under her wing, pitying the state she had fallen into without—as Lady Grantham had put it—a mother's care and teachings. Far too long had the Princess spent around stuffy old men, she had proclaimed, learning only banter and the art of veiled insults punctuated by icy glares.

No more than a fortnight of attempted grooming had passed before the Lady, too, rejoined the whispering maidens as they sat ponderous in the drawing room in defeat, watching the girl from afar with wary eyes and wondering how such a beauteous smile could spit such acid.

As they laughed and tittered amongst themselves at dinners and danced with many men at parties, long necked and delicate creatures of pleasantry and calming grace as they were, Zelda sent them wary eyed glances as well and wondered of the popularity that came so simply to them.

Simple, like everything else in their lives; these women who cared only to read the smiles they produced on every man's features.

If only they had been characters upon a page, the Princess might have admired them extravagantly, though one step closer to such characters had her inclined to be sarcastic, making private jokes within her mind at their expense.

In truth, she was not unlike them in nature—more genuine, in fact, in her compassion and tender care than many of women surrounding her, as graceful and sweetly eloquent and thoughtful as they wished her to be. It was this nature she lavished upon the books she read, treating them all as old friends and giving each ample time to enter her affections, opening up to the characters and historical figures the way she simply couldn't with other people.

Zelda realised that this was because of the connection made between her mind and the written word; she digested them without a barrier of flesh and bone to hinder, absorbed into the pages as they bled into her in turn, privy to the internal universe she held hidden from her father and others.

Her attempts to convey it had simply been unsuccessful, for she opened up to them like a book—a preface, a plot twist, the necessary pacing and long winded explanation of setting and context, all presented to those who did not hold a passion for reading. Their dislike and avoidance for her began to affect her this way, for Zelda felt it was unwarranted. They did not know her, and they were not interested in the library her head had become.

The Princess had stopped trying to tell her stories, and resolved to simply read them.

She was now an elusive figure, despite being of a marriageable age, like a spectre of the late Queen haunting castle halls at night or glimpsed to startle during the day. Her new found neutrality and reticence was well received, much preferred to the supposedly conceited and icy youth. When not attending to growing duties, Zelda's whereabouts often went unknown during the day, and she held no close friends to wait upon her.

The Lord and Lady Grantham moved out to the countryside to enjoy their elder years humbly, and another Lord took his place within her father's entourage. Zelda had not had the displeasure of meeting them as yet, though she was pleased to hear of their unmarried status—the Lady's efforts to forge a fine young woman of her would not be repeated, at least, by another childless beacon of false and unwelcome mothering.

It wasn't long after that she began to find several books misplaced within the archives she treasured, one novella in particular set back three spaces over to the left in error, and that would serve as her first hint that her sanctuary had become a shared haven.

The Princess spared a few minutes looking for the intruder whenever she came now, curious and somewhat territorial, though only ever managed to find evidence that they had come and gone. Cautiously, she peeked out of her shell, making the rounds of her home to interact tersely in pursuit of the new arrival. She asked a question to each person she ran across, venturing out to the gardens and even slipping through the drawing rooms she despised.

Zelda slowly gleaned more and more about this man as she went, sometimes directed to a likely place to find him though the Lord would be absent when she got there, curious and frustrated at the fact that he himself was not so easily come by.

In a fit of pique, she resolved to give up on the wild goose chase, striding back toward her library in dismissive defeat. When she shut the ornate doors behind her, the Princess would lock them in spite, resolute in keeping her peace undisturbed by the wayward Lord of the West. Gathering tomes into the crook of her arm, her routine picked up where last it left off and Zelda cleaved toward the comfortable nook she had created.

Turning around the corner of last aisle, she found the plush fabric of her armchair already filled, and the sight halted her immediately to stare.

A Gerudo had stolen her seat, lounging there with all the semblance of a conqueror upon her Kingdom's throne.

Her gaze was drawn first to the shock of crimson he wore as hair, cut far shorter than the passages she'd read of the west indicated was his preferred choice. The lines of his weathered features were drawn into a pensive frown as golden eyes darted left and right, scanning the words presented to them by a book, negligently held in one hand.

He wore leathers and cheesecloth and topaz, adorned richly though his country was rumoured to be poor, and those hides seemed to blend into thickly tanned flesh seamlessly. His bulk took up all the space her chair had to offer, paltry under the size and stature he bore proudly, built of corded muscle and matching her height even while sitting.

He was a dark and powerful mark against these things she knew, every inch of him juxtaposed to the world Zelda had built here—he was a stranger, resting heavy like a diseased blemish against a backdrop of comfort and solace, threatening to erode its health until it crumbled and perished.

The Princess hissed, announcing herself to draw his eye upon her, clearly marking him for trespass and expectant for him to appease or submit to her as others often did.

The Gerudo did not heed her at first, offering in his silence that he was aware of her presence and claim to this place, and issued instead a nonchalant glance to answer—he would not be moved.

Zelda rephrased, cold and distant as she informed him of his failure to replace books where they belonged. The man lifted a brow, casually asking why such a thing bothered her so.

It was then the Princess took note of what he was reading, silently gauging his taste and intelligence. Surprised by the title she found resting in his hand, Zelda dodged his question, focussed instead upon asking her own.

The Lord did not hesitate to inform her why his choice was made, his accent wrapping around the words warmly to lend them an exotic fascination, only to comment on a few of the titles she intended to read as well.

She asked if he thought women ought to read as often as men did.

He asked her why they couldn't.

Hours passed by after that, each of them reading as avidly as the other, though both had set their books aside. They spoke of volumes of history, annotating the passages they shared and favoured with their own opinions. Lesser known playwrights and their works were turned about and inspected, handed to one another as they offered new insights into endings and revealed the other side of the jokes. Anthropologists who had painstakingly ventured out into foreign cultures and the wilds of the land in search of oddity to observe and classify were praised or torn to pieces, world views come to clash as discussion deepened.

Soon enough, they were discussing their own tales, authoring them in the pages of the other's memory.

By the time they reluctantly moved to attend dinner, Zelda understood why Lord Ganondorf had been so hard to find, and why so much of the information about him and his whereabouts she had received proved inaccurate—he was elusive as she was, moving about quietly with a library locked in his head and unable to share it. He was taken for a barbarian who knew only the law of the sword, much as she would be compared to a cobra of his own desert, by the other courtiers.

They continued their discussion in a manner which could not be overheard at the table, communicating through glances and subtle gestures that seemed lost on the company; loud and simple as the were, those who knew not how to read them.

The Princess was pleased to finally find somebody who regarded her with the same smile afforded to those delicate creatures of the dance floor, simply upon hearing the tales she held.

The King was pleased, also, that his daughter had chosen an eligible Lord to ingratiate herself with—even moreso for the fact that the man was immune to her poisons, when arguments did inevitably arise out of the heated discussions over literature.

Whispers started up again of the elusive Princess, now concerning her equally evasive cohort, and the gossip spoke not of an unwed shrew but, rather, a marriage to the Western Lord. It was favoured strongly by most, who were of the opinion that a harsh desert filled with a warrior clan would be a strong asset in the event of a war; Hyrule's border would extend farther than the desert alone, one day. That aside, it was best to have the Gerudo as allies, rather than enemies, given the legends of old.

Arrangements were soon being set into motion pre-emptively, before any official talk of courtship had been broached between the odd pair. They allowed the world to turn outside of their haven, paying little attention to it—as dismissive of unimportant notions as the court had once been to Zelda.

The Princess began to favour the Gerudo's habit of returning books to their improper placing, smiling to herself when she found them. It allowed her to track what had caught his interest, leading her on a secret path to discover more of his internal universe; the side of him she understood was hidden from others, as hers was.

Her intrigue caught her studying the volumes he left awry, chasing down any hint to the complexity he could not convey to her by spoken word alone. Instead, the words he read would speak for him, reflecting the mind that touched them, much as the Princess herself could be similarly deciphered.

When her father finally broached the issue of selecting a suitor, his suggestion was clear—Zelda scoffed at how remarkably unsubtle it was. Who else could it have possibly been, after all?

Though unsure of this tentative threshold of romance, she favoured the political benefits to come, weighing them firstly and throwing in her fondness for the Lord's company second.

Courtship commenced no more than a month after they had met, and to the relief of many, the gala that announced their coupling saw Zelda's first dance—the first man to offer his hand and not be rejected outright, the seemliness and elegance of the other women diminished by the Princess. Soft sighs to swoon at such a sight resounded; whispers grew into loud assumptions of the future, praise and popularity began to grace her.

Her suitor's taste in reading material experienced a shift as well.

She asked him of them as they sat down together in the library, tucked away in her little nook that now welcomed him fondly, a chair of his own set beside hers. With a raised brow, he thought little of it, commenting that his love of history and lore should have been well known to her by now. Zelda agreed that revisiting old favourites was by no means a crime—in fact, many of the legends he favoured had kept close company with her as well.

They spoke of the fabled Sheikah, who had long since died out, before flowing onto bygone eras to match the time when such a clan still lived. Ganondorf offered fleeting half smiles, aloof and seemingly content to hear the Princess prattle on in her impressively accurate way. Her fondness for the Hero of Time emerged, and Zelda did not hesitate in admiring such a figure.

It came as something of a shock when her companion did not share her enthusiasm, quick to turn instead to the opposition: the King of Evil.

Bemused squints and awkward silences followed the conversation to leave it hollow, a large divide in opinion becoming apparent. Civility lessened. Opinions were loosed like cannon fire to tear holes in the other's views. Terse and tight lipped grimaces ended things on a bitter note, and the couple returned instead to silence and books for the rest of their evening, uninterested in hearing any more of the other's voice for the moment.

They did not speak for days after, and in this time, Zelda perused every tome he had laid hands to that she could find, wondering where in the printed world the man could forge such forgiving persuasions of a monster like the tyrannical despot of old.

To her chagrin, she found little of any sentiment he voiced reflected upon the pages. Tracing the history to surround the figure instead, the Princess thumbed through the eras, assessing documents of culture and anecdotal accounts of those who lived under such a fearsome reign. One passage finally revealed to her the hint she had been chasing—the Evil King was a Gerudo, as well, perhaps even an ancestor to the current chieftain of the Western clan.

From there, a scarlet thread of murder and deceit could be found binding these books together, forming a pattern that concerned her. Zelda stayed up late into the night, reading by candle whenever another thought caught her to rise from her bed, chasing down an answer as questions began to plague her mind. She felt she was narrowing in upon a great secret concerning the man she knew—the crack in the dam that held back the very waters of his nature.

A large hand caught her wrist in the dark, sending the candle falling to the ground, flame spluttering out in the motion to die.

She was spun to face the silhouette of him, towering over her form with only a book held limply between them. The Princess stared blindly, tracking the shadows for his golden gaze, hoping to read it now more than ever as she felt him take the tome from her grasp to snap it closed.

Vague motion happened in the corner of her eye as the book was returned, improperly, to the shelf beside her head.

"And here I thought you said there was no reason a woman should not read." she hissed, narrowing her eyes upon the shadow.

He drew close enough to whisper, his lips grazing hers as he did so.

"…We've started a new chapter now, Zelda. I don't want to have to go and rewrite it now, just because you've begun to discover my older works."

His mouth captured hers before she could breathe a word, and Zelda received the answer she searched for. When his lips had parted from hers, her hand slipped away from his grasp, returning that old habit of isolation to her within this place.

"Authors do tend to recycle their failed ideas, when they feel they've achieved the prowess necessary to correct their error…" she conceded softly, turning away from him in the darkness.

"A good plot twist can make the story come into its own, you know." he chuckled low, looming over her still. "Here I started it thinking it would be a murder mystery… but it seems I've found a new muse."

"…Well, for your sake, Ganondorf, I do hope this new turn will have a favourable ending." she offered coldly, though the smirk she wore was audible as it twisted around her words.

"Because I write a pretty mean  _tragedy,_ myself."

 


	9. The Sun sets upon the West

The Gerudo envoy had arrived in castle town later than anticipated, the first caravan breeching cobbled flagstone just as dusk had settled in to chill the air. Burning red and orange hues streaked the skies above, cast by a dying sun, and the townsfolk paused to watch and whisper of the women walking boldly through their streets. One after another, each bore hair and eyes to match such colouring. Even the copper of their skin, as was noted behind surreptitious hands to pointed ears, had been forged by harsh desert rays. Blue and green eyed gazes followed the exotic spectacle, tracing the sinewy muscle and lithe curvature of their foreign frames; occasionally met with a golden glance returned, or a proud smirk from painted white lips.

It was fitting that the sun set upon the West.

Legend had it that long ago, when the Goddesses created the lands, they set about their task in an orderly fashion. The peoples of Hyrule, one by one, came to be born by divine touch. When Nayru set the waters in motion, the swiftest currents became the Zora. Farore blew the first breeze across the fields, and from the grass grew vast forests, out of which the Kokiri would bloom. Din sculpted the mountains as they came bursting forth from the earth, and the debris, as it tumbled down, became the rolling Gorons.

Flame leapt up from Din's arms to set the sun ablaze, a sempiternal fire that could never be doused. Nayru tempered it into a sphere and purposed it to turn with Time and Order. Farore blessed it to give life, and allow the world to grow beneath it. Daylight swept across to illuminate the world, and when the flash subsided, finally, the Hylians stood to greet it.

When the last of that light faded, the very instant that the sun touched the sandy edge of the world, the Gerudo came to be; born of the sunset and left to greet the darkness and the stars.

It was common notion among the Hylians that themselves and the Gerudo were absolutely different by the purest element of their design—night and day, so the old tales would have them all believe.

The Queen did not hold such a sentiment. The envoy were received with the same hospitality and grandeur as diplomacy demanded, for in Zelda's eyes, they were the same as she; no better and no worse in nature than any of her Hylian kind.

This was the opinion she voiced openly to her people.

Years in the making, much of her reign had been dedicated to tying any loose thread left to her by the last era. It had been a stern and winding road, long and arduous to devour many hours and many more pages of script. Her quill had taken to numerous new edicts with the intention of correcting the mistakes of the past, and of her father before her. Zelda had lost count of the scribes, soldiers and courtiers that had come and gone under the stress of stabilising relations with the West once more.

Many in her Kingdom still did not understand her urgency or passion for the task, though showered their queen in praise for her patience and compassion. Her Wisdom was well known and well revered. She did nothing without purpose. Almost single handedly, Zelda had set about the task of subduing old prejudice and consoling much of the doubt, dedicating herself to that task so wholly that—now well past common marrying age—she was still without a King, nor even any suitor of note.

But seven years well spent, she could only smile down from her balcony now, crystalline eyes watching the caravan wind its way slowly up the path to her home with a very different gleam in them than was held by the townsfolk below...

But then, she supposed, her people knew nothing of the boy inside.

The ornate throne sat empty behind her as Zelda stood in wait of her guests. She was so restless, in a sense, that she simply could not have been seated—that, and she felt a more humble, approachable image was required. It was a careful assessment she made, rehearsing it in her mind; what would be said, what the attitude would be, whether she had truly dissipated as much tension as she'd hoped.

What  _he_  would be like, and whether his golden eyes would shine with childlike potential and innocence, as yet untainted by the darkness Zelda knew he was born to bear.

In truth, she feared witnessing even a sliver of that evil present in one so young.

Broken from her reverie, a voice would call to announce their arrival; "Shall you receive them now, your Majesty?"

A nervous touch to blonde hair. A contained and unnecessary smoothing of skirts. Delicate features schooled into the most neutrally pleasant expression available to them as satin gloved hands were clasped gently before her, and readily the Queen would lift her chin, her eyes never leaving the doors.

"Send them in."

The world seemed strangely silent as the lonesome creak of ornamented wood was pulled aside at her whim. It was a foreboding thing, though she tried in earnest to fill it with hope. It was all she had worked for, caught in this moment, and Zelda prayed her efforts would not be in vain.

Those familiar doors ushered in the very fate of her Kingdom, and the Queen held her breath to stand upon the precipice of her future.

Zelda counted the steps that echoed out into the chamber, each one belonging to a woman wielding beauty she found fiercer than her tastes had prepared her for. Tall and prideful in their gait, she counted five as they entered her throne room—it was startling how similar they were to one another, as if one had split herself into many. Those flanking were garbed in white, sporting short crops of tussled crimson the likes of which no dye could ever replicate. Warriors dressed in rich purple and silk guarded the lead closely; a woman whose locks fell as straight as the waterfall in the valley separating their lands, long and held high in a topaz clasp.

It caught Zelda as difficult not to stare at the toned flesh so willingly revealed to her eye, and the list of names she had memorised fell back into the haze of her mind. The leader she knew very well however, for her correspondence and role among her tribe, and not letting that escape her, the Hylian offered a smile as the women came to kneel beside their own royalty.

True to form, the Gerudo heading them did not bow like the rest, instead resting a hand rather casually upon her rounded hip.

Zelda expected nothing less from the mother of the King.

"Lady Mateya," she offered softly, as if calling the name of a lifelong friend with fondness. "Welcome to Hyrule Castle. I do hope your journey was taken well?"

"You could say that..." The woman chuckled amicably, giving her reply in a manner that suggested respect enough to satisfy the Queen's anxieties.

A polite incline of her head gave the illusion of genuine interest as Mateya continued to speak, but Zelda's attention was elsewhere. Her eyes had caught movement in the shadow of the hall beyond, and shifted catlike to follow it.

"...Needless to say, we'll sleep quite comfortably tonight, I'm sure." another light snippet of mirth.

Drifting back to hear the tail end of Mateya's answer, slender brows rose as if she'd heard every word keenly, and Zelda's smile grew. "I am pleased to hear you all made the crossing safely..."

She would feign distraction then, before another word could be said between them, tilting her head to see past her guests and out into the hall with mild curiosity. A glow of surprise brightened her visage with all the tempered practice of a fine actor.

The queen was eager for introduction, knowing the answer before asking the question as a benign blink came of it. "...And I see you have brought your _son_ , as well?"

Mateya's smile faltered for a moment, a shimmer caught upon the gold painted lips to reveal it. Exotic eyes drifted sidewards, long lashes dipping low to regard the hall behind her.

"I have." the Gerudo would concede slowly, as if reluctant to admit truth to a rumour. A small gesture, somewhat hidden, was given to one of her subordinates as they removed themselves from her side, headed to the hall.

Mateya's gaze settled back upon the sovereign with stern conviction, and Zelda noted how divorced she seemed from motherhood already. "He has grown enough to travel with us. A few years more, and he will be undertaking the trials of adulthood. I saw no reason that he should not be able to handle himself beyond our borders."

A silent 'ah' slipped from the queen's lips as crystalline eyes followed the retreating guard, eager to see the child she would return with.

"How old is he now?" she asked idly, flicking the mother only the briefest glance out of politeness.

_Seven,_ Zelda knew. She had counted every single day, from the very first time he drew breath.

"He will face his eighth summer later this year." came the answer, a subtle pride in her tone as the Gerudo turned her head expectantly, watching like a hawk that the boy made as crisp an impression as she hoped. "He has been... excited at the prospect of meeting you; asking questions almost all of the way..."

Satin gloved hands twitched to tighten, a firm squeeze to calm her nerves as Zelda barely managed a distracted smile. "Curious as any child that age, no doubt."

Curious as  _she_  was, for the familiarity of her name caught in his rounded ear,  _no doubt_.

"He has been oddly silent since we entered the gates, however." A smirk curved Mateya's painted mouth, an eerily knowing thing—as if the Gerudo had heard such thoughts—and the mother gave order at the very first sight of her child's shadow, trailing behind the guard sent to fetch him. "Introduce yourself, boy."

The woman in purple silks was all the Queen could see at first, a tentative set of footsteps lightly padding along behind her stoic frame to hide. Then the flash of a white pant leg, red and blue designs crossing the knee. A tiny, tanned hand flexing nervously. A lithe arm, bearing the lightest tone of muscle Zelda knew would one day dwarf the strongest knight; already stained with foreign ink. A crimson braid, adorned with a golden ring and several beads, swaying longer than the rest of his short crop as the child stepped into view from behind one of many sisters...

The haunting flash of those golden eyes, still as sharp as Zelda's dreams could recall. They locked upon her own without any of the shyness he had thus far displayed, and time seemed to stand still.

She swore the comforting rhythm of her heartbeat had vanished from her. The grand chamber seemed to shrink impossibly smaller, consuming all else as it demanded focus upon the tiny King. Even as a boy, his spirit garnered a heavy presence, thickening the air—Zelda could not identify what it was at present. Perhaps he was simply an endearing sort of child to behold, taking one aback by his exotic and—for the moment—somewhat androgynous appeal. But one day, she knew, that sensation would grow into a commanding sense of authority and control...

...Something to be feared, if he ever gained a taste for its affect.

Silence settled to prickle at her skin, and Zelda knew she stared far too openly. Her cheeks strained to lift, pulling that diplomatic and practised smile back into place. She worried of how conspicuous her nerves were to the women watching, but that was not so distressing as the simple fact: Zelda did not  _wish_  to smile at him.

He did not return it, staring back with those golden eyes as if waiting for a statue to move.

The lack of emotion present upon his features sent a chill sweeping up Zelda's spine. A paranoid thing, born of misty memories from another life, surely. It was clear by his rigid stance—and the watchful eye of his mother—that this meeting had been strictly rehearsed. The queen was seeing things that simply weren't there in her anxiety.

"A pleasure to meet you, your Majesty..." his voice was quietly broken by a harsh accent, strongly lacing his Hylian speech as he bowed his head. His gaze did not break from hers, wide and innocent as his eyes seemed to be. The child faltered for a moment when he righted himself, glancing to his mother for a hint as to what came next.

With a hint of panic, he would hurriedly add, "I—I am Ganondorf, future King of the Gerudo tribe and..." his eyes turned upwards, searching the ceiling for what he had forgotten to say as if it would be written there. It had quite obviously escaped him, if Mateya's grimace was any hint, but the boy covered his error as best he could with a lopsided grin. "...And we... thank you for your hospitality..."

It was a foolish and idle thought, but some part of her had half expected the deep and foreboding rumble of a man to purr from his lips like poisoned honey. Zelda traced every inch of him with haste, searching for a sign that he was anything but the inquisitive and slightly nervous child she saw before her.

To her great relief, she found nothing, and her smile came easily after that.

"I am Zelda." she returned softly, a motherly fondness seeping into her tone as comfort washed over her in waves; a sizable weight had been lifted from her shoulders this day. "And I have been looking forward to meeting you as well."

The evening flowed smoothly after introductions had been dealt with accordingly.

Ganondorf, as it so happened, was very little like his predecessor—a fact which caused Zelda some bemusement, though also a great deal of comfort. Over the course of dinner, the queen had been gifted ample opportunity to inspect the boy further, helped along by his mother's want for the Gerudo's small sovereign to impress. It was little wonder Mateya held such confidence in her son's ability to do so, either, she had noted.

He was, in every facet, a remarkable young man who, after settling in and setting aside some formalities, opened up like a book on display. They talked of many things; what it was for him to grow among sisters while Zelda herself had never known siblings, the differing social customs expected while dining. Tenderly touching upon the subject of history, she found him to be well read and quite familiar with the arts of war, but no more so than would cause concern. He favoured the legends of the Hero and spoke fondly of him, much to Zelda's surprise, and even expressed a wish to be as proficient with a sword one day himself. Of the Kokiri, he shied away from delving further into the Hero's origins, seemingly holding a childlike fear for the immortal children he described as 'creepy tree puppets'.

It was one of many occasions that night that he drew laughter from her—something Zelda had not expressed genuinely in quite some time.

Hope bloomed strong in her heart that her efforts to change the course of fate had granted her the advantage she sought. He was fresh to the world, golden eyes gleaming with curiosity and intelligence. The wise Queen could protect him from the dark fires still hidden away within his soul, smother it and snuff it out as yet before it sparked to engulf him... just as she'd hoped.

It had taken years to bring him here, orchestrating this chance to influence the man he would grow into. Regular correspondence could only follow from here on out, perhaps even summers spent at her castle—access to the libraries to advance the keen young mind of a ruler was as fine an excuse as any. Fencing was a personal hobby that she could use to draw him closer, noting his interest in swordplay. The queen could teach the boy to play chess and use such precious hours to fill him with wisdom, discussing the course of their thoughts with one another and tailoring his to ever more positive avenues.

Slowly but surely, Zelda could take the child under her wing, using little more than improved relations with the West as her reasoning to the external world; her tutelage and interest being a show of support and respect as they rejoined the rest of the Kingdom.

Zelda was at ease when she retired to her chambers, and felt her sleep would be restful once again. She drifted off easily, relishing the silken pillow against her cheek, softly ushered away by the flickering glow of a candle.

It was still burning when she awoke not an hour later, blinking away the shattered pieces of her slumber to find that she was not alone.

In the dimly shifting light, she could make out the small figure sitting at her writing desk, chair turned to view her from across the room. A half lit crop of crimson hair was enough for her to recognise the boy, golden eyes staring through the darkness from that same emotionless expression the child had worn when they'd met.

"Din's fires...!" She shifted quickly to sit, startled by it as she furrowed her brows, flicking a glance to the door before settling upon the boy; incredulous. "H-how... how on earth did you get past the guards?"

He was silent a moment, seeming not to hear her at first, and then a wry smirk caught him as his eyes flashed in the camber of the flame.

"Easily." was all the child offered, quietly amused by her reaction.

Zelda frowned, eyeing him sternly as a lock of blonde fell from her shoulder. "I may be fond of you, but that does not mean you can simply invite yourself into my room in the dead of night." she drew the covers a littler higher, holding them close to her chest. "Now, either you take your leave, or you can begin by explaining what exactly it is you think you're doing here."

Tilting his head lightly, Ganondorf gained a quizzical expression, seeming to study her features without any trouble in the shadows. A small hand came up to rub his cheek, and head lowered, Zelda swore he was on the verge of sulking.

"...I just wanted to be near you." it finally came, small and unsure—he had regained some of the shyness in the face of her stern tone, and she softened immediately for it. His hand flopped down again into his lap, beginning to twist idly at the fabric of his knee. "I have three older sisters back home. It gets cold at night, cold enough that you can get sick, and even though I'm not supposed to, they let me come and sleep with them sometimes when mother won't find out. I've grown used to it, I guess... It's just not the same."

Gold eyes darted up to steal a glance of her, and sheepish for his confession, the boy turned slightly to look away; hugging his knees to his chest. "I've never really left the desert before. I know I'm not supposed to be in here, but I figured if you were asleep, maybe I could just be quiet and leave before I got in trouble. Most nights I leave my room and sneak into another... going through the motions seems to sort out the odd feeling I get for being here."

"You've just gotten a little homesick, that's all." Zelda finished, allowing a small but terse smile to form upon her lips.

A somewhat reluctant nod was her first answer, as the boy King frowned at the eastern wall, jaw tightly clenched and balled fists clinging around his legs. "It's strange; walking down these halls, seeing all those flags above the arches. This castle is even bigger than Temple of the Sands... I haven't lost my way as yet, though, so that is a good sign."

A pregnant pause followed as the child trailed off there, teeth clamping down on his tongue. Crystalline eyes watched him fidget in the seat, wondering what else he would confide in her tonight. There was likely much the boy's mother had warned him away from sharing too openly with her, after all... but again, the queen supposed these old anxieties of hers were never at rest. Whatever it was he bit back on was likely no more than childish worries—an unfamiliar bed and the restrictive burden of politics upon one so young.

She sighed. "I understand. It must be strange trying to rest in a new place that is so different from what you know..." her sympathy was warming, but distant, as she continued slowly with a look of guilt. "But we  _must_ heed propriety. If you were found here, this intrusion could easily be considered an act of treason, or even seem the precursor of an assassination attempt. At this early stage, we're both in a very tentative position as rulers... even a touch, when taken in the wrong context, could become the instigator of a social war. We may be on good terms with each other thus far, but our peoples are not quite as far along as we are. It will take a while yet before either of us can relax."

"I know that!" the child snapped, a sneer flashing across his mouth that Zelda caught in the candlelight—an eerily familiar thing to her eye. It was gone just as quickly as it came, replaced by a tight lipped grimace. "The very last thing I want for my people is to jeopardise their future, now that it has brightened... but as you said, we are restricted by protocol at any other time of the day. This is the only way we could talk frankly, without our conversation being monitored by prying ears."

Zelda recognised that pattern of thinking, though the trouble seeded there had not yet bloomed. She held fast, clasping her hands in her lap and thinking carefully on what she was about to say—it was perhaps cold thing to advise a homesick child away from comfort, but she simply could not let it go.

"If your first duty truly is to benefit your people, Ganondorf, then regardless of the gain, you would never take such a risk when you know very well what could come of being caught."

The Queen endured the glare he flicked toward her, expecting hurt to shimmer in his eyes. Her words may well have dampened the fondness that had bloomed between them earlier, but it was a small setback that Zelda was willing to manage. But a child's heart was flighty with the things it felt, and to ensure she meant no harm by it, the motherly tenderness she'd held back on started seeping through.

"I don't mean to upset you." she conceded softly, staring down at her hands. "But you must believe me when I tell you it is for your own good. It isn't that I have no wish to talk with you, truly, I will make arrangements so that we can speak honestly and privately at more convenient times. I told you to make yourself at home here, but you cannot take it so literally that you would sneak into my room at night as you do with your sisters. I would indulge you if I could... but I am a Queen, and you a foreign Prince, before all else at present."

Silence was returned to her. It was a painful thing, settling into her room like a fog to separate them. No more than five feet away, it may as well have been miles—there was so very much she had to offer him, but time and circumstance would allow none of it just yet. The clock turned, every moment wasted to hold his fate over her head; uncertain. It had always been this way, Zelda supposed. The Gerudo was always just beyond her reach, accessible only in the most dire of moments as she floundered unprepared and shocked by the opportunity. She had sworn it would be different this time, but it was an uphill battle she felt exhausted by already, though the first blow was still years to come if it did.

Pointed ears picked up the sound of bare feet padding along the ground, quiet and quick as the child slipped away from his seat. The Queen's gaze slowly rose to capture his silhouette once more, standing at the edge of her bed to stare up at her. Emotion had fled his face once again, a small copper statue watching the world turn around him. He seemed to fixate upon her with a clarity she found off-putting, as if he had no difficulty at all to see every detail of her—even the night could not shield her from his judgement.

When again he spoke, a smirk crawled across his lips, and Zelda's blood ran cold.

"You misunderstand. I am quite at home here... it  _is_  strange to walk these halls, but only because I wondered if I would ever get the chance to do so again. Indeed, I have been a little homesick, but it is good to be back. You would not believe what I had to go through to convince that woman to bring me here..."

Brazenly, his small hand would come about to brush the top of hers, finally breaking the blanched queen from her trance as she recoiled from the boy's touch. Reality had sunk its fangs in with a fearsome bite, its poison leaving her numbed for the shock. She had imagined it, surely, just another night terror to warn of what could happen to this child—this precious, hopeful child—if things went awry.

He continued on with a small chuckle, taking her new found aversion in stride with some amusement and pacing leisurely around her bedside.

"I did miss this, you know. You always did have some sort of flimsy reasoning prepared to keep me from your chambers... they didn't hold up, of course, but I'm sure you recall that well enough. Why else would you go to such great lengths to ensure things went smoothly between us, now?" fingertips traced her bedpost, his hand dancing along the wood to evoke the memory in her; the marking on the back of it illuminated well enough in the dim light for the queen to see.

"No. It... You can't be... I have talked with you all evening, I would've known if..." she whispered low, the very last of her breath stolen with it.

He did not stop to allow her to catch it, either, lazily swinging around the post to lean at the foot of her bed with a haughty smile. "And a valiant effort it has been, at that, up until tonight. I have thoroughly enjoyed reconnecting with my sisters... It is refreshing to see the crown attempting to do the same. I do so hate to leave them, but seeing how we get along so  _famously_ , nobody should be surprised when we marry. You've spent your whole reign on stabilising relations, and you look so lonely without a husband, after all. It certainly solves the impropriety of my being in your chambers, doesn't it?"

Still holding onto the post, the boy leaned closer, whispering in false secrecy as golden eyes flashed bright with the hellfires she had dreaded. "And just between you and I, sneaking into my sisters' rooms instead of yours simply doesn't hold the same gratification...  _especially_  as a child."

Mouth agape, Zelda caught herself quickly, putting up her walls just as fast as she could build them to level a finger toward her door.

"Leave. Leave immediately, or I  _will_  call for the guard." Crystalline eyes burned with icy conviction as she hissed her order, hiding the horror that threatened to tear her up inside—she was already far too late to save him, and it was almost too much to bear.

A frown flickered upon the youth's features for only a moment before the smug curve of a smile replaced it, a gentle rap given to the wood before he righted himself to turn from her. The Queen's gaze never left the back of him as it seemed he would comply, a scowl sharpening her delicate countenance in the darkness to encourage his departure, though the boy took instead towards the eastern wall to pause there.

Over his shoulder, he grinned a devilish smile—one she knew would settle into itself when he was a man, growing in power every year until it shook her to the core to receive it.

"As you wish...  _Princess._ "

He stepped through the shadowed brick like a ghost, leaving her there with the answer of how he'd slipped past her security so easily—a potent hint to his mystical talents being carried with him across his lives. The Queen's candle burnt out not moments after, and it was an omen she did not take lightly. Once again her head settled upon silken pillow. She did not rest as she did before.

A thief had stolen her peaceful slumber once again, and replaced it with silent tears.

 


	10. Hot under the Collar

Pink.

It was not often that Gerudo eyes saw such a colour. Flowers did not grow in the west to yield such a shade, and those rare fabrics or dyes—pilfered from merchant caravans—that did were not widely favored against robust reds and rich purples usually worn. Tanned skin did not hold habit of carrying the hue either, even amongst the younger ranks that would giggle and squirm at a mere sight of their King.

But worn on paler pigment, brightly flush about the narrow bridge of a Hylian nose and high cheekbones, it was very hard to miss.

The visiting royalty had been under close scrutiny to begin with for their oddities and impractical tastes, but Princess Zelda seemed to be the most rigid of all. Under the relentless desert heat, her entourage had been quick to adapt; guardsmen arriving in steel had quickly stripped down to basic leather armours, and the few delegates had given up any layers of attire they could within decency. Any snide remarks on the first day to be overheard about bared midriffs and shoulders had been rather quickly silenced by the third. Even the prudish translator had traded his tunic for cheesecloth.

Zelda, however, walked out into the scorching sands each morning with her head held high, not willing to remove so much as a glove.

If envy was green, the Gerudo cackled, pink surely shaded the pig-headed.

"You can see her glistening from ten paces," remarked a child to her mother, pointing and grinning wide at the strange sight of the Princess, "It's like she's made of glass!"

The Gerudo smirked down at her daughter, running slender fingers through the child's red hair. "She probably is,  _Nasiir_ … hard, but ready to shatter under a little bit of pressure."

Such were the sentiments the Gerudo King had often heard since the Hylians arrived, and inconspicuously leaning against the shaded brick of a doorway, Ganondorf watched his stubborn guest from afar. Zelda was famed for gracefulness in her own lands, but as golden eyes followed her—strolling with a parasol alongside his second in command—he felt 'stilted' was a better word… perhaps even  _sluggish_ , if he were honest.

_A miracle that she can hold herself upright with that wisp of a frame,_ he thought dourly,  _let alone move under all of **that**._

Unable to hide from duty for long, his second spotted him, changing her course quickly to approach. One glance was enough to glean that the Princess held the same habit for boring small talk as her father, and there was only so much touring one could do of the fortress without affording potential spymasters an unwanted glimpse of anything untoward. With a sigh, he pushed away from the wall to meet them, a defeated kick given to the sand as he thought of how best he could occupy the bland girl without it being a complete loss.

Crystalline eyes looked his way, dulled by the slim shade of her parasol—had it not been for that, Ganondorf too would have noted that Zelda did _indeed_  glisten under the sun. Forcing a diplomatic smile, he would greet her with a nod, curt; her pale lips pursed in turn, his second simply waving the burdensome girl onwards only to flee without a word.

"Princess,"  _Great Mother above, you're even more pink than before,_ "I trust Taniiyu has filled your day well thus far?"

He spared a damning glance toward the retreating Gerudo warrior, but refreshed his tailored smile when Zelda spoke, gesturing slowly for her to walk with him.

"She has, yes..." The Princess conceded, tucking a sweat slicked lock of hair aside, "Your archery range is quite impressive. I'll admit, while I am familiar with the sport, I don't fancy my aim on horseback would see me fair well." A hollow, forced sounding chuckle left her, saccharine in its timing to suggest—to his ear—either a lie or a wish to be elsewhere.

Barely concealing his grimace, Ganondorf chose not to respond beyond an affirmative grunt. Unsure of how to time his lengthy stride beside her, his gaze wandered toward their feet. Even under her skirts, a misstep was obvious to catch, and though the girl carried herself stiffly, the reality was her walk was gaining a slight wobble. Zelda seemed to notice his scrutiny, pausing and self consciously fiddling with her parasol, and then pretending to people watch in order to draw his gaze elsewhere.

"You all do spend so much time outside…" she blurted hurriedly, seeming to stop short of what she wanted to say and covering it with a breathless, uneasy sort of laugh.

At her sudden airiness, the Gerudo frowned, coming to a halt alongside her. "Coming from shaded courtyards and cool stone walls, Princess, it probably does seem a novelty to you," he cornered her easily; squinting to note even the points of her ears had grown pink. "Most Hylians do tend to underestimate the climate, here."

"I suppose it is… very different…"At the very mention of the temperature, Zelda's hand unconsciously rose to fan her face lightly, her smile worn small upon dry lips to avoid cracking. Her denial did not crack either. "Quite refreshing, actually, I could use more sun on my skin. The latest studies have the physicians advising it's rather good for one's vitality."

"I think in your case that remains to be seen. You seem to be bit unsteady on your feet, if anything…" Ganondorf returned quickly, brushing her distractions aside. "Long dresses don't mix well with the sands, either, of course."

_But, neither do most things of Hylian make_ , he hissed internally. If her pride was anything to gauge by, the coming years of diplomacy between them would be tenuous at best—Gods knew his people could not survive another reign like her father's… and the last war had cost far more than was gained. Their numbers had still not fully recovered.

Her grip on the parasol tightened. "Yes, well… The sand is quite difficult to walk in, what with my being so used to sturdier ground." That was all she would concede, however, as Zelda held firm to her rouse. "But, it's early days yet, and I think I'm managing rather well."

She watched from the corner of her eye nervously as he studied her, peering over her from head to toe as a fiery brow began to rise in question. Then the Gerudo sidled closer, a knowing glint in his eye as he whispered her way, wearing the expression of a peddler whom she'd haggled with too long.

"Really?" sarcasm draped the word as he stared her down, "It looks to  _me_  like you're about to  _faint_."

"I feel fine." She said resolutely, flicking a small frown his way in warning. Unbeknownst to her, she had also begun to sway—the previous walk had left her a little lightheaded, she supposed, but a moment to compose herself was all she likely needed.

"You're a ridiculous shade of pink, your lips are chapped and you are sweating arrowheads." he scoffed, derisive as his glare sharpened, "You are not 'fine'. You're dehydrated," A negligent flick of his hand towards her attire followed a shake of his head, "And only an idiot with a death wish would continue to wear such clothes  _here_."

A rather defensive twitch caught under her left eye and the Princess hissed back too quickly for either of their liking. "I don't think I care to be taunted, Lord Ganondorf. I am not some delicate flower that will wither without shade. I can assure you have had more than enough to drink today, and I'll thank you to grant me the right to dress myself, at least!"

"Zelda—"

"You shall refer to me as  _Princess Zelda_ , or your Highness," Turning her petite nose up for good measure, Zelda would lower her parasol in defiance and allow the sun to scorch her freely. "And again,  _Lord_ Ganondorf, I am  _fine_. Now, I was informed you wished to show me your thoroughbreds. Shall we?"

In truth, the sensation was already overbearing, and without the slim veil of shadow the small umbrella offered, the dry desert heat beat down without mercy. She could take it. She simply had to—if word got back to her father that she had shed propriety for comfort while in an ambassadorial role, she would never live it down. She represented the very nature of her Kingdom. The Gerudo were not the only ones able to survive such conditions, and that was a fact in the eyes of the King, determined to prove that the Westerners were no better or tougher than a Hylian for it.

Zelda could not yield weakness here, and would bear the heat with dignity and decorum as her father expected, without resorting to the ways of the Gerudo. With war not yet even a decade behind them, strength was a victory Hyrule could not afford to give.

Crystalline eyes were locked with gold as the two leaders sized each other up, a silent challenge issued forth and taken up. After a minute or two, the raw sun was visibly taking its toll, and watching beads of sweat slide down the sides of her face, Ganondorf's frustration piqued.

Flexing fists at his sides and grinding his teeth, he decided better of pushing the stubborn Princess further, and with a deep breath he steadied his temper. He couldn't afford to prove her wrong, where such idiocy would see her dead within the week. Concealing a sneer, the Gerudo would step aside and glance back toward the archery course; the shade of the stables  _would_  do her some good, despite the girls efforts to the contrary.

"I swear you haven't the sense you were born with…" He snapped harshly, a rare slip of his usually charmed tones with her as he gestured roughly for her to follow. "Come with me."

Affronted—and careful to conceal her flinch—Zelda glared daggers at the now scowling man. She made no move to walk after him at first, but the dangerous leer he tossed over his broad shoulder stirred her quickly onwards.

Following up the slope that hugged the side of sandy walls, the Princess tried to keep pace with him, silently relieved for the chance to cool down in the stables. By Gods above, she could barely stomach the thought or riding out in such heat—dry mouthed and tired, there was little chance she  _could_ mount a horse herself in such attire.

Her feet were heavy beneath her, and though she would not admit it, the Princess had indeed hit her limits. Ganondorf's strides were far larger than her own, and dawdling after him, the strength was quickly leaving her legs altogether. She fumbled over the sand to trip upon tussled fabric, and weary, didn't catch herself in time. Her parasol rolled across the sand as her hands suddenly found themselves half buried by the grains, and the world seemed to spin for the fall. The lazy gusts of wind seemed suddenly more distant than before, her tabard like an oven for the strain of walking uphill and vision blurred by sweat.

She could hardly breathe this thick western air, like fire into the lungs to fill the blood with smoke. The gold of the sand grew white and the ringing within pointed ears came loudly. It was all too overwhelming, as even her father's disapproval waned severely in lieu of burning skin. Politics be damned, she was suffocating within this dress.

The Princess had collapsed quicker than the sensation of being scooped up into muscled arms could register to a hazed mind, effortlessly carried into the cool sanctuary of limestone walls.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

When Zelda woke, streaks of orange had begun to paint the windswept horizon outside her window, evening beckoning a cool change in the air. Laid out on the soft spread of exotic sheets, a groggy blink was enough to tell her she was not in the guest rooms. The bed she rested on utterly dwarfed her form, and to the sensation of generous fabric about her legs, the Princess shifted quickly to sit upright and take in the state of herself.

No bodice, no gloves, no shoes; strange white pants that felt thinner than cotton barely covered her knees, as light as air. Her breasts sat pert and unbound beneath what could only be described as some sort of sash, boldly sporting Gerudo designs and bearing her pale stomach for the world to see. Wide eyed, the shock faded enough for a frantic glance about the room, looking for any sign of the jewelry she was now bereft of and wondering if the thieves would dare to be so bold.

To the left of the large bed were laid out her things, draped haphazardly over a small table, but she didn't notice them there. Her attention fixed fast—like a rabbit caught in the crosshairs—to the Gerudo King sitting beside them, thick brows raised expectantly with a leg crossed over his knee.

And he wore his smirk like a demon catching a glimpse of fresh blood.

"I had almost forgotten how pale you were." He chuckled low, his eyes never leaving hers—they did not wander like other men, she noticed. His fingers drummed rhythmically against the arms of his chair. "You're so skinny, it was hard to find clothes to fit you… luckily, one of my younger daughters was willing to share."

Unable to believe the audacity of him, Zelda stuttered and tried to swallow her horror. Her fury, however, was just beginning to bubble up to the surface as her face flushed again.

"You-! How  _dare_ you undress me!?" confusion swirled and cracked in her voice, and squirming quickly to grab a pillow, she would hug it to her chest modestly. "This is unacceptable! Where are my guards? They would never allow this indecency to befall me, what have you done with them!? I-"

A hearty cackle filled the room as he threw his head back, slapping the arm of his chair in mirth. Zelda could only stare, mortified and fearing the worst of him, as Ganondorf struggled to regain his composure and hold some semblance of sincerity before her.

Leaning forward with elbows on his knees, his head hung with the last of his amusement rumbling in his chest, and as Zelda weighed the option of simply screaming out for help, he raised a haughty grin at her.

"They think you and I are out riding in the valley. Another hour, and they'll be joining us in the dining hall none the wiser." he offered quietly, as if it truly was their secret. "Your reputation yet remains intact, as does your health."

Paranoid little thing—what did she expect of him, in the position that he was?

Calming some, but not willing to relinquish the protection of the pillow just yet, the Princess had settled into a bitter frown. Ganondorf had never struck her as a trustworthy sort, but she supposed he was in no position to risk the security of their treaty. Even so, liberties had been taken were they were not appropriate, and by her own fault or not, the knowledge that Ganondorf had seen her naked was unnerving. Regardless of whether he lived surrounded by women, she was not one of his sisters, and so she leveled a finger toward him.

"If you were aiming to spare my  _dignity_ , Lord Ganondorf, you've dismally failed!" She huffed, blowing a lock of hair from her face; flustered. "You do me no favours keeping such secrets from my own guard, when  _they_  are tasked with my wellbeing! You would save one humiliation to replace it with another… the least you could do is have your kin tend to me! Far better  _that_  than the impropriety of undressing me yourself!"

Whether he was aware of the cultural divide in taboos, the Gerudo gave no hint—he made no apologies for disrespecting them if he did know.

"Then you should not have been so stubborn. Your men changed their attire themselves and saved the trouble…" the Gerudo mused with a shrug, eyeing her oddly—it was simply common sense.

"Your foolishness is of no concern to my sisters. They understand what the desert can do, and respect it. You do not… and were it not for status, your own inflexibility would have you dead within the week and nobody would bat an eye. I've done you a greater kindness than most strangers receive here."

Biting the inside of her cheek to keep from seething, the pillow in Zelda's grasp was now suffering a rather crushing hold. Through clenching jaw she spoke more bluntly, razing him with a furious flash of her eyes.

"If my party sees me dressed like this, they will see me as indecent. Their respect for me shall diminish. That is more unacceptable than even the disrobing of my person without consent."

She allowed that to simmer in the cooled air between them, following his gaze as it flicked toward her discarded regalia. "I am a representative of Hyrule. I am not the spoilt and ignorant woman your sisters snicker about under their breath. These things stand as a symbol to them, and to strip me of my clothes is to take my authority with them…"

"Granted, I will always prefer a headstrong woman to the demure wisps of your court…" His grin faded back into the smug curve from before, allowing her to decipher it for herself. "But, baking yourself in the sun until you pass out only proves that you are still a  _child_. So, I've put you into a child's clothes until you grow to fit these ones better."

"You undermine me, then. My father will not reflect upon our treaty well, before these insults."

"Don't be so stiff, Zelda. You're far more comfortable in this outfit, aren't you? Not burdened by all of… this ridiculous fanfare."

A wayward toss of his hand toward her former attire—thickly bunched in the many layers it held—came to bat at the tussled skirts, and the man chuckled again, mischief swimming across the lines of his face.

"If I were to step out of this room entirely nude and go about my business as usual, it would not hinder me in the slightest. My authority would only diminish so far as I allowed it to, and my sisters would see very quickly that what I choose to adorn my body with does nothing to affect the worthiness of the blood within it. I would still be their King, Zelda."

But then, his weathered features softened to take on a more regal calm, considerate as he thumbed the hemming of her gaudy dress. Golden eyes wandered over the embroidery and satin, and without a hint of envy or greed, also perused her jewels.

Zelda watched this silently. She barely registered that he had stopped addressing her by her title, as their conversation had worn on, though the sound of her name coming from a man who had seen her naked suddenly brought the heat back to her face.

"Even so, you lasted much longer than your father did. Though, in all fairness, he wore a ceremonial breastplate when he came..." he clicked his tongue at the memory, brows furrowed. "He never was one to support change, though he often pretends otherwise for the sake of appearances. A pity nobody told him the right to rule is not stitched into your clothes."

Her hold on the pillow lessened, and slowly, the Princess began to listen. She knew she had been foolish. She knew that she deserved her own embarrassment. She knew the Gerudo thought her a grand joke, as pink as the day she came wailing into the world and seemingly just as clueless as she had been then. Their laughter had not bothered her, for the women did nothing to hide such cackling jests at her expense. It was the whispers, breathed amongst her own, belittling the women who lived here for their 'backwards' culture, that Zelda feared.

The desert was harsh, and to survive here required strength and endurance, a constant struggle to be overcome. The toned flesh their clothing revealed could attest to that, though they were not scantily clad for conceit or lesser morals. It was a necessity of their survival, and one they understood very well—she held great respect for that, but it had taken three days of heat to strip her entourage of their prejudice enough for them to share her feelings.

Perhaps if she had set the example, instead of being the last to crack under the heat, there would've been no snickers or whispers or indecencies at all.

Broken from her thoughts as the Gerudo rose from his seat, Zelda found herself at a loss for what to say or do. Humbled by an unlikely source—a man famed for his arrogance advises she, who was supposedly the wiser of the two—it took a good few moments before she gathered her words together, calling out after him as Ganondorf made to leave.

"So… We've been riding in the valley, you said?" Crystalline eyes glanced toward her strewn garments, tugging pensively at the pillow on her lap.

"My stallion put your spoilt mare to shame, and you were so impressed by our horses, you intend to buy one for your own stables. We talked about the silk trade and the possibility of an aqueduct. I find your company bland, and you think I am rude…" Dismissively rolling broad shoulders, Ganondorf barely offered her a second look as he swiped at the fabric serving as his door. "…and Zelda?"

A small smile began to bloom on her chapped lips in humour for the ease of his lie—she knew he couldn't be trusted. "Hm?"

"You're still a ridiculous shade of pink."

 


	11. Join me

The Gerudo King was well known for the controversy he caused among the noble circles.

There were rumours enough about the ways of the west to grant him an instantaneous infamy when first he arrived in Hyrule; a leader of desert brigands who were said to be as cut throat as they were indecent.

The Gerudo tribe held a nasty penchant for home-wrecking, besides their thieving ways—be it gold or men, they would take it if they could. They were spoken of as sly, silver tongued rogues with devil-red hair. Their jokes were considered cruel of humour and tasteless, and their music was made up of the loud, obnoxious twang of untuned guitars. Debauchery was the norm expected of them, and the shortness of their lives was more likely caused by loose morals than the desert heat.

He was expected to be a brutish savage, knowing only how to drink and swear and steal, and so very few of the other Lords had expected the Gerudo to remain part of the royal court for long.

It was quite a shock when, instead, Ganondorf Dragmire proved to be a calmly cynical, charmingly collected and refreshingly cultured sort of man.

The men claimed it nothing more than a shallow illusion, jealousy burning when their wives spoke warmly of the westerner, and several Lords scorned by arguments with him claimed a temper ran hot in his veins. A chambermaid swore she'd seen the Gerudo King cavorting with an archivist in the moonlight, and following that there were even accusations of adulterous trysts with a few noblewomen—all of whom were married. He rarely drank anything more than brandy or wine, and nobody could say they had witnessed him drunk, though it was often said spirits were now being pilfered from the cellars.

Despite these claims to Ganondorf's true nature, the King of Hyrule favoured him immensely, considering the western lord a close confidant and ignoring the rumours entirely. Within a few scant months, the Gerudo had been appointed a highly sought after role within court, and suspicions within the castle doubled.

Nobody could figure it out, but no matter how sure one was of his transgressions, not a single one could be traced back to Ganondorf convincingly enough to require consequence. Those few things that did were simply swept under the rug by the King's favour, or the Gerudo himself, now that his new influence allowed it.

By and by, the disgruntled nobility came to accept bitter defeat, and simply simmered away in their dislike of the man, knowing that nothing could be done about his hidden behaviour.

But when a prized bottle of Kakariko Special Reserve—gifted to the Princess on her sixteenth birthday a few years previous—went missing, Zelda had no doubts as to where it had gone.

And so with a sharp knock and a tapping foot, she stood waiting at his chamber door.

It was a languid swing that opened it, a tanned forearm taking its place against the frame as the Gerudo leaned casually through the threshold, wearing only a pair of cotton pants held about his waist with a sash. Both of them were taken aback at that moment—Zelda flinching to avert her eyes from his bare chest quickly, and a flash of panic sweeping Ganondorf's features to find her there.

Thick brows rose high with surprise, and though he stared a moment, shock soon faded into intrigue. Then a smirk began to grow and his tongue clicked cunningly behind it.

"Princess Zelda," he purred suddenly, eying the blush on her face and watching the woman's eyes awkwardly searching for a place to look. "I did not expect you to be calling so late… What can I do for you?"

The Princess curled a hand over her chest—as if she'd swallowed something hot—and tried to frown at him whilst avoiding his torso.  _As indecent as the rest of his kin,_ she huffed internally, visibly flustering as she cleared her throat to ignore it.

"I do believe you have something of mine." She announced then, her head held high in a superior way. "I have come to retrieve it. If you hand it over willingly, I shall forget about this and we can assume it an honest mistake. But if anything else goes astray, there will be consequences, Lord Dragmire. Your behaviour tows the line of propriety as is."

If an expression could be considered guiltless, that was the one he chose to give. A furrow of brows came thoughtfully, rather than indignant as she might have expected, and the Gerudo pursed his lips before inquiring on her meaning.

"Forgive me, Your Highness," he mused carefully, squinting toward her, "but that sounds as if you think me nothing more than a common thief…?"

There was a daring glint to the gold of his eyes that baited her, and like a pike on a hook, Zelda leapt high to show her colours.

"Are you not known by the title, 'Gerudo King of Thieves'?"

"By  _your_  people, perhaps, though it rings truer to a slur than a title of any kind." He shot back evenly, concealing a grin as he took to the higher ground.

Grinding her teeth pensively, the Princess changed her tactic quickly, unwilling to be cornered so easily. A saccharine smile painted her lips, arms crossing lightly beneath her bustline. "You're the only person with free access to those cellars besides my father, Lord Melchin and a few staff. Lord Melchin does not drink, and I hardly think my father would be so inconsiderate as to take from my own stock. The servants would not risk their livelihoods for a bottle of brandy…"

She took a step forward then to close the gap between them, her forearms nearly brushing his stomach, and stared up at him with a smugness Ganondorf found amusingly premature as she continued.

"…and  _you_ have been known to particularly favour Kakariko brands."

_Clever little thing,_ the Gerudo noted with fondness—it was rare that he found a Hylian noblewoman whose head was not filled with fluff. Indeed, most seemed to flock to him and were easily impressed, surreptitiously flirting behind their husband's back out of boredom or, perhaps, simply the thrill of exotic male company. He had not expected anything more from the King's only daughter, spoiled and catered to as she was; reason stood that she ought to have been the airiest of the lot.

Yet, she had caught him out with impressive timing, and he knew her word on the matter would not be ignored by the King. Consequences could indeed come of this if he did not cooperate, as one confirmed theft served to condemn him for whatever else he had done, or at least raise suspicions for what he was yet to do.

A pity he was more clever still.

With a chuckle, he gave a culpable smirk, nodding to concede. "That's very impressive, Princess. It seems I have been far too bold… I didn't realize it was of your stock, mind, but I suppose I would've taken it from  _somebody_."

"Indeed. You might think you can pull the wool over the eyes of others, but I will be watching from now on, and I am not so easily fooled." She chastised lightly, somewhat haughty now that he had confessed.

It was at this point she remembered his shirtless state, the proximity illustrated by the way his flesh brushed her arms with each breath. Stiffening and trying to will the heat away from her cheeks, Zelda thought to take a step back, but suddenly found that Ganondorf had shifted aside. He gestured to invite her inside—into his personal chambers! What nerve!—and offered her a painfully amicable smile.

"My apologies for the inconvenience, Princess, but I'm afraid it is already open." He admitted slowly, the hint of a chuckle rumbling low in his chest. "So, if you wished to save it for an occasion, it won't last now. The quality shouldn't be wasted, so I'd advise partaking tonight…"

Zelda gaped openly for a moment before she caught herself, clenching her jaw as she visibly bristled at such news. She stuttered a few syllables in rapid succession, picking and discarding her words as she deemed none of them quite venomous enough for his ear.

That devilish grin was already flirting with the corners of his mouth. "…After all, Princess, where I hail from, life is considered an occasion in and of itself. Allow me the honour of sharing it with you, and you may take your pick of its replacement at my expense."

"Surely you jest…!" she finally snapped, anger whipped up on her features like a disturbed nest of hornets. "Absolutely not, Lord Dragmire! Gods above, you are not even decent, I—I cannot—You are a thief and a scoundrel, sir, to invite me to drink the goods you have pilfered from me, of all things, alone with you in you quarters, and-!"

"Zelda, come now, don't be so stern…" the westerner laughed easily, waving his hand as if to dismiss her reasons entirely—seeming as if he was the one to be forgiving her—and reaching out to usher her inward. "Cannot is hardly  _will_ not, and I think you've made it quite clear who has control of the situation. I merely mean to make my apology sincere, in that I won't deprive you of your 'goods' entirely."

Before she could get a word in edgewise, and hardly able to double back behind his muscled arm, the door was closed behind them. The sound of the latch held a strange finality to it, and Zelda doubted it was worth the hassle to argue with him—she would simply take the bottle and leave, once he had poured himself another glass.

Stepping into his rooms, the smell of earthy incense pervaded her nose, thick upon warmed air and matching the décor of red and gold. Momentarily distracted by the western furniture present, crystalline eyes wandered from end table to tapestry, settling uneasily on a large bed twice the size of hers. A wary glance was also given to the sabers and spears adorning his wall, and she wondered how sharp they were.

Ushered along quicker than she was used to, the Princess stumbled over the edge of an ornate rug as he guided them toward his fireplace, and did not save herself in time.

She gasped as her ankle buckled, bracing for the impact of hard stone flooring, but faster than she could blink—almost as if he had planned on it—the larger man rounded to catch her. Her cheek smashed firmly against his scarred chest, and Zelda found herself suddenly clutching his tattooed bicep, her body flush up against his and cradled from the fall. His crimson hair tickled her forehead, hanging from his shoulder. His large arm had snaked around her waist, a hand settled at the small of her back.

"You haven't even had a glass yet…" he joked quietly, his breath fanning out against her ear in a way that Zelda found unnervingly close. "Are you alright, Zelda?"

"Stop calling me that!" she hissed, pain swirling in her voice, "Ugh, my ankle…! Din sear it all, I should never have…"

The dull throb from her ankle would pass within the hour, she knew, thankfully not as crippling as it could have been. Even so, she struggled quickly to stand on it and remove herself from his grasp, red as a beet as she felt his muscles flex around her.

"Here, you shouldn't try to put weight on it, allow me…" he offered, moving to carry her, but Zelda hissed like a cat in water, pushing away from him defiantly.

"I don't need your help, just—"

The Gerudo was quicker though, bundling tussled skirts into his arms along with the rest of her and scooping her up with ease. Carrying her toward the small table he'd been drinking at, the Princess huffed indignantly even as she was placed gently in one of the chairs. Her previous haughtiness had been replaced by the vision of a child who had not gotten their way, and Ganondorf found it difficult to keep the smirk from his face. When she glared toward the bottle beside her, though, her reaction had him grinning like a shark.

Her eyes shot wide as her hand lashed out to take it by the neck, holding it up to the light. "There's barely enough for two mouthfuls! Share the rest, indeed! Offer me a taste, more likely!" she cried, glaring up at him like he had spat upon her shoes—his clear amusement was as infuriating as the loss, and knowing he would make a joke of it, Zelda decided she didn't care to be the punch line.

"It  _was_ an excellent year…" he mused in poor defense, though the Princess slammed the bottle down, looking as if she intended to flay him alive.

"Of course it was! Do you have  _any idea_ what this bottle costs!?"

"No, but I'm sure it was worth every rupee." He chuckled then, gesturing towards her briefly as he rounded the table, seating himself and taking up the remainder of his last glass. "After all, it takes a special drop indeed to coax a Princess to one's rooms."

Zelda stared at him with enough intensity that Ganondorf had to hide his flinch, feeling a prickle of heat flash across his shoulders and wondering if she was actually on the verge of setting him ablaze. A tense silence settled in the air between them, heavy against the incense as the fire crackled behind, like the sparks of irritation in her eyes.

Finally, an icy whisper slithered through her straight teeth, pricking into tanned skin like pins. "Lord Dragmire, you are the most selfish, inconsiderate, and positively  _reprobate_ man I have ever had the misfortune to know."

"And yet, you somehow find yourself in my rooms at night, looking to share a drink with me and blushing at my form, much like the other noblewomen I've met." Swirling the precious brandy in his glass, broad shoulders rolled lightly as he raised it to his lips, unaffected by her words.

"If I have offended your prudish sensibilities, Zelda, feel free to leave."

"So you tricked them as well, I take it?" She tested her ankle lightly as she spoke, gauging whether she could simply storm out, though the bolt of pain up her leg trapped her there. So she continued her verbal assault until she could, taking up the bottle again and hording it in her lap jealously.

"You are a liar and a thief, and hardly the gentleman you pretend to be by day. I daresay all of the rumours following in your wake are true, and that being the case, you are the very definition of a charlatan. Wooing married women and luring them into your bed; for  _shame!"_

Then it was the westerner's turn to stare, genuine confusion evident in the lines of his face, until a flash of eureka lit up golden eyes and a bark of laughter erupted from his chest. The Princess bristled again, ready to scold him for such pride in his crimes, but Ganondorf collected himself enough to talk, holding out his hand as if asking for time to ponder this.

" _Lure_ them? You think I  _lure them to me?_ " his expression was an odd mix of amusement, shock and horror, and chuckling out the last with a mirthful sigh, Ganondorf shook his head. " _Naforduuri astinatsa…_ Perhaps I should listen to the gossips more often…" he mused quietly, taking another sip.

Zelda leveled an incredulous frown his way, morbidly curious for his reaction—he hadn't hid his guilt over the bottle theft, so it stuck her as odd that he did not brag of his romantic conquests to spite her. Pensive, slender fingers began to fondle the glass before nervous habit brought it to hover before her lips. She eyed him carefully, her anger slowly ebbing away.

"Well, no matter who comes to who, you're still bedding married women." She jibed sourly, bitter for the notion as her gaze flickered over his flesh—he wasn't considered handsome by common Hylian taste, but certainly, his physique could very nearly make up the difference to some. She herself could admit, when she ignored the impropriety of such thoughts, that the muscle before her drew the eye like a beautiful painting.

Just a shame it was worn by such an infuriating man.

Golden eyes rolled and the Gerudo scoffed at the thought, settling his gaze on his own drink.

"As I said, there have been plenty of women in these rooms at night, but a glimpse of flesh is all they receive. Given the state of their husbands, they should be allowed a little thrill now and then, if that's what they fancy. It isn't as if your culture allows them to do much else." Pausing to down the last of his glass, he would place it back down with an appreciative sigh.

The Princess visibly shrank, feeling a little foolish now for thinking the worst, especially when the only  _proven_  crime he'd committed was a stolen bottle of brandy. After all, her father had given him leave to take what he wanted from the cellars—it may  _actually_  have been an honest mistake.

Grasping at the last of her straws, Zelda chanced one last rumoured tryst, unsure as she raised a brow at him."And I suppose the archivist was simply probing you for stories of the west?"

Ganondorf seemed to stiffen then, leaning back in his chair and eyeing her oddly as she finally took the last of the brandy down—he wasn't sure how she knew about  _that_ , but now wasn't the time to ask. Her accusations may not have held water, but her judge of character was excellent—he was indeed going to live up to his title as King of Thieves, and not too long from now, a few very important royal treasures would be falling into his hands.

Thanks to the key he had frisked from that woman, in particular, there would be little evidence to suggest they had gone missing until his plans were already in place. When Hyrule was his, a lost bottle would be the least of her worries.

But, Zelda was the very last person he needed sticking her nose into such matters, and a lie formed as quickly as his smirk did, golden eyes watching her hand as the empty bottle was put down.

"I may have made… two exceptions…" he offered, glancing to the side and resting his arms behind his head with a lazy stretch. "But, I hardly think that's any of your business. Besides which, she told me she didn't  _have_ a husband, so I can hardly be blamed for that…"

Wide eyed, the Princess gaped at him, though this time in pure disbelief. "You were spotted in the  _gardens_!"

"You have very high hedges." He returned simply, shrugging it off and letting her figure it out for herself.

It took a few moments, but furrowed brows soon became a disapproving leer. "And the other 'exception' would be?"

Enduring it easily, Ganondorf would shift to rise with a snicker, reaching across the table to take the empty bottle with him as he meandered toward the fireplace.

"I did 'lure'  _one_  woman to my chambers." He confessed then, tailoring it to sound sincere and carefully peeling the label away from the glass. "I didn't think she'd fall for it, truth be told. The other women told me enough about her to intrigue me, and she was quite a captivating sight to behold, even from afar. I began to trade charms for information, as it were. That's how the rumour mill started, I suspect."

With a negligent toss, he threw the torn label into the fire, watching it catch with a crackle.

"It didn't work out as well as I planned, unfortunately. She arrived far later than I anticipated, and having already assumed she wasn't coming…" golden eyes turned to the bottle in his hand, and with defeated chuckle, he toasted her with it before shattering it within the fireplace. "I suppose you could say I didn't… rise to the  _occasion_. Sorry about your ankle. That was cheap of me."

_And now the evidence is gone,_ he smiled internally,  _and if my delightful little story doesn't sway you, you're hardly in any position to tell your father about this. Late night visits to my chamber, as you noted, are not_ _ **proper.**_

The Princess absorbed that information slowly, turning it about in her head as all the pieces clicked together—she had called him a liar not minutes beforehand, but for the life of her, she couldn't see a contradiction to challenge this with. If this wasn't the truth, then she was hopelessly outclassed by his cunning. Everything he said, when drawn together, made sense to her. Still she didn't quite trust it, for all the controversy he carried with him.

Her father had never once doubted him, though, and continued to sing the Gerudo King's praises… perhaps the rest truly was part and parcel of gossip, spurred on by old stigma. It was only a bottle after all, and secretly, she much preferred the firm warmth of his flesh to cold glass.

Whether he merely timed his lie well or not, Zelda found she cared very little.

"As long as you hold to your word and replace my stock, I'll consider your debt to be squared."

Gingerly moving to rise, she limped softly toward the door, knowing that she had already tarried here too long. She paused to glance back though, taking one last look at the scarred flesh he bore, and decided there were finer things to drink in than spirits. With her had lingering on the handle, Zelda's blush returned, cursing herself for falling into his trap—even more so for the fact that his bold gambit had paid off, after all.

"…Lord Dragmire."

He turned to look, arching an eyebrow toward her though she had her back to him still. "Yes, Princess?"

"When my ankle has recovered… I might have you join me for a stroll through the gardens." And with that, the door closed quickly behind her, leaving him gaping after her.

Charms for thrills, indeed... perhaps he wouldn't need the archivist's key after all.

 


	12. Very Little to do with It

Ganondorf Dragmire was never a man to seem small, but on this morning, the Gerudo King could only be described as withdrawn.

Princess Zelda first noticed this as she sat in on her father's court, watching the large man shifting almost nervously in his seat. Usually, the westerner held an air of utter confidence that was both a cause of envy and intimidation among the noble class, standing a head and a half over even the tallest knight. Hailing from a neighboring fiefdom, his attitude was a foreign mix of sly charms and wisecracking humour, strung together by a renowned—yet strangely seldom seen—temper, which often disarmed any opposition he faced. He was a self-sure man who offered smirks over smiles, and could silence others with the cut of a single scowl.

Today, he seemed to shrink in between the shorter courtiers, sullen with his shoulders slumped and avoiding the eyes of others. He spoke very little to anyone, and when he did, Zelda found the rich rumble that normally rolled through one's bones had diminished into a graveled murmur. His gestures were muted and his strides were no longer prideful, but unsure.

The Princess held habit of watching the Gerudo, be it out of suspicion or simple curiosities, and every day found something more to the mysterious King of the West. She was sensitive to the change in him, seeing it immediately though others had overlooked the significance. In fact, the only thing anyone else might notice was the  _physical_  difference he now presented… or rather; they  _no longer_ paid attention to it, now that it had changed.

Ganondorf's crimson hair had always been long and well maintained, often jeered at for being oddly feminine for the care he took in its upkeep. He would braid it back through intricately jeweled headpieces, wear it in exotic top-knots, tie it off at the nape of his neck; sometimes, he'd even leave it loose to tumble over his shoulders or adorn it simply, much like she did, with combs or clips of gold.

It was a well known fact that his hair had caused some controversy among Hylian circles, and even her father had frowned upon the styling, deeming it unfit for a man to wear. Over the few months he had resided at the castle, Ganondorf had gradually adopted less audacious styles, seeming most recently to try and hide some of the length.

But  _never_  had Zelda dreamed that he would cut it so tragically short.

As court adjourned, the Gerudo left silently, weaving through the others as if he suddenly feared their touch. Though a few nobles lingered, milling about to catch the ear of herself or her father, Zelda managed to slip away quickly to follow him. She stalked him through the halls, politely easing through any distractions though she lost track of him once or twice.

She knew there was only three places he would go if he wished to be left alone—the library, his quarters, or the gardens—and catching a lucky glimpse as he disappeared through a vestibule, the Princess was relieved by his choice to venture outside.

He always sat at the same marble bench, set aside a fountain to let the sound of water soothe him, and peeking her head around the corner of a high hedge, Zelda found him easily enough. With a quick tug at her attire, she would forge the leisurely pace of a stroll, so as to make it seem her stumbling upon him was by accident. A gentle hum accompanied her to warn of another's presence.

With the talent rivaling the finest actors, the Princess stepped out to walk by him and, with an innocuous blink and a slight gasp behind her smile, pretended to notice him by chance.

"Good day to you, Lord Dragmire." She softly chimed, guilty for the cheeriness of it.

The Gerudo did not look up at her, barely lifting his golden gaze above her knees as he openly soured. With a reluctant grimace, he offered a curt nod and barely managed to acknowledge her. "…Your Highness."

His terseness was discouraging, though she feigned surprise well, delicate brows rising as she casually moved closer toward him. "Oh, you look different… Have you done something with your hair?"

She winced internally as the bitterness bled into his face, but bravely stayed even as a fierce glare was turned her way. Even the fires of his anger, she noted, seemed to have been doused.

Leaning elbows upon his knees, Ganondorf was quick to look away, turning his attention to the fountain rather than her inquiring features. Large hands flexed and his words came quietly hissed through a clenched jaw, dismissive of the topic.

"No." hate simmered behind it, subtle though present, " _I_  had very little to do with it."

Seeing her opening, Zelda was cautious, chancing another step closer as she brought a hand to her chest. Leaning further into his peripheral vision, she tried to catch his gaze, looking for any hint of danger—they were in full view of the archers if trouble did arise, but she never risked more around the westerner than necessary. As much as he could fascinate her, Ganondorf was also the cause of many shivers down her spine, and a worrying amount of nightmares that she feared to think true in any form.

"Ah… I had always assumed you were one to cut your own hair." Softly prying, she hesitated, carefully choosing her words as she eyed the space beside him. "Unhappy with the results, I take it?"

A grunt was the only answer he bothered to give her this time, though it served as confirmation enough.

Despite that, the Gerudo made no move to disengage her, perhaps hoping that she would move along if ignored. The Princess continued on regardless, closing the small gap and casually turning to perch herself on the bench as well. To her chagrin though, the bold move did not earn his attention either, his scowling features still fixated on the steady trickle of the fountain.

Awkwardly clearing her throat, Zelda chanced empathy, reaching out to him in the vague hope that he may not simply get up and walk away—he hadn't thus far, which was another oddity in his behaviour.

"I… have always had little choice in how I was to wear my hair." She began carefully, leaning to watch his profile. "To be perfectly honest, I have never been allowed to do more than brush it. Even if I were to fancy a certain style, I wouldn't have the foggiest clue as to how to achieve it myself… my handmaidens have always tended to me that way…"

She earned small progress when he gave a derisive snort, the subtle movement of his head hinting at the roll of his eyes. He remained silent for a moment, and then muttered something under his breath—pointed ears strained to hear it, though his mother tongue was lost on her.

Hesitant, she continued, gauging his reaction closely. "When I was a girl, my Father used to inspect their work each morning to be sure I was… presentable. He was always very particular about such things, and now that I am of a marrying age, he would never allow—"

When he suddenly shifted to leer back over his shoulder at her, Zelda jerked away, having been caught leaning suspiciously close. She could only stare numbly, paling as the look he gave sent a chill through her bones.

Then it softened into something mournful, and the Princess felt a weighted pity take hold of her heart as he looked away again; no insult, no sneer, no powerful spirit raging within him like a sandstorm. Ganondorf seemed emptier to her then, as if he'd lost something much more important than hair, and its absence left a painful silence where only yesterday he'd have been trading veiled barbs by now.

She understood what he had said now, as the gravity of it hit her.

_He_ had very little to do with it—oh, she understood  _very_  well.

Unsure of what to do in this strange vacuum of grief, Zelda let her hand tentatively rise to touch his shoulder, unable to continue her prying like before. Only one question mattered to her now.

"Ganondorf," she whispered, as if it would shatter the earth to speak any louder, "Are you alright?"

Only a long and weary sigh came of it at first, until he rose from her touch and the bench, a defeated gait carrying him away.

"...No."

That was all Zelda heard, though she wasn't certain she was supposed to.

* * *

 

When the Princess walked into her father's court the next morning, there was an uproar left in her wake.

She went about her business as usual, gracefully silent as she offered placid smiles to those who stared. Mouths hung agape and whispers spread like wildfire. Confusion at first, then creased lines of disapproval forming on the more elderly faces.

Her handmaidens cowered in the servant's quarters, fearing any blame. Her father stood as pale as a ghost, fearing this was not a nightmare.

Ganondorf's eyes lit up with the fire he had before, a smirk curving his lips as he finally met the Princess' gaze, quick to sidle up to her when things were adjourned.

"Short hair suits you better than it does me, Princess..." He snickered low, leaning in to whisper it over her shoulder. "How much did you have to bribe your handmaidens with?"

Throwing a naughty grin back at him, Zelda offered a coy little shrug—the verbal lashing she would receive later was worth it, as his smirk seemed to set the world right again.

_"_ _They_  had very little to do with it." She laughed.

 


	13. Restrained

He does not guard his glass, for while her words can carry poison potent enough to slay him thrice over, she knows better than to taint the wine.

She does not flinch before him, for even while he may take up all the air around her, she knows he cannot stifle the steady rhythm of her breath.

A gripping boom rumbles close to make his voice, subtle anger rolling like thunder from his scarred chest. Her voice is a quiet and sobering bell chime before it, ringing clear to cut through the sound.

Her food grows cold as she sets her cutlery aside, feasting instead upon the silent wavering of his eyes. A realisation swims within the lines of his visage, flickering like flame to burn his smirks and glares away cleanly.

Silence.

The Princess lifts her glass, swirling it idly as it passes before her lips. The Gerudo watches every movement, eyeing the chain at her wrist when it clatters against the hard wood of the table.

Words form bitterly on his tongue, but the cut of her glare wounds them. He hesitates far longer than he'd like, only to give voice to a softer, sombre tone.

His words disappear soundlessly into the depths of her porcelain skin, and Zelda is unmoved. A frosted twitching of her brow is all he receives, and she pushes her plate away, still brimming with roasted morsels more delicate than he has ever tasted elsewhere.

It leaves him a whisper, a pleading and small sigh that hints at defeat.

She softens, and the ice in her glare begins to thaw. Her gaze drops to her lap, and once again the chain rattles as slender fingers trace the rounded belly, tender for the child within.

The Princess reaches for her fork, a slow and deliberate thing, and she sends a hateful look across the table. The rattle of the chain offends them both, he knows, and privately he considers being rid of it.

He knows better.

She would not hesitate to end him, though she knows he can not do the same.

It is the well being of his daughter, that keeps her mother restrained.


	14. Cold Competition

From the moment that Lord Danton had begun courting Princess Zelda, the Lord of the West—a long serving advisor to the crown and a celebrated historian in his own right—had held a notorious dislike for the man.

Though it was noble gossip that carried the most obvious of their clashes out into public forum, the lone Gerudo member of the royal court had been quick to voice his protests when their potential unison was announced. While not the first to do so, he was by far the most vehement, setting forth the question of worthiness the young Lord possessed to the throne. The outcry went largely dismissed, and ever since, golden glares had been fiercely aimed toward the suitor with not the slightest of subtlety about them.

Though political unrest beckoned for a future King to be established, whispers of jealousy quickly flooded castle halls, wondering of a secret rivalry yet to unfold.

When no more than a week later the Princess was stolen from her Lord in a dance, swept away by the towering figure with crimson hair to be hoarded step for step, all in company knew well of the game afoot. The Princess revelled in the attention, coy yet steadfast as she allowed her suitor to be snubbed before a crowd. Lord Danton endured the partners as he cycled through them, patient though Zelda's hand was not returned to him, nor offered to anyone else.

But when the music stopped, and bows were taken, he was quick to steal her back and direct her to the privacy of the gardens. The Gerudo did not stay to partake of the festivities any longer. The crowds churned with rumours in his wake.

Lord Danton, it seemed, liked to indulge in the Princess' love affair with the Hyrulean countryside, spiriting her away from castle walls whenever he got the chance. Be it tagging along for the hunt or spying wild stallions for her stable, or simply an outing—a wicker basket filled to the brim with sweet rolls and bottled wine—the charming prudence with which he kept Zelda occupied was of the utmost frustration to the Western King, who himself had a long list of duties to attend.

So when it came to selecting the royal escort to accompany the couple north west, to the snowy mountain peaks which Ganondorf knew would leave Zelda awestuck and inspired, he had pulled every last fragile string his terse companionship to the King had conjured.

Leftover from the days when a convoy of cartographers had first set out to annex and document Snowpeak, the sizable mansion built to house them stood in good condition despite the barrage of blizzard winds to buffet it over the years, and was welcoming enough as their lodgings. It was a prized piece of land and a heritage landmark, so the young Lord claimed, and his family's ownership of the frozen estate was proudly touted several times.

For the time of season, the weather was pleasant enough, sunlight filtering down through pale wisps of cloud to shimmer upon the snow and catching frosted trees to gleam. It was the picturesque dream wrapped in a white blanket that Zelda had been promised, much to the Gerudo's chagrin, and even this otherwise barren mountain scape seemed to leave his desert sands listless by comparison for its pristine vistas.

While footmen shuffled in and out with heavy luggage, Ganondorf stood by the iron doors, his own feet already ankle deep and beginning to soak—he did not care for the cold, but none of this showed in the presence of the Princess or her damnable suitor. A wary scowl razed the view before him in silence, taking stock of the echoes to be heard fading into the misted canyon below.

He heard Zelda's laugh lilt softly from the foyer, and sneered for the Lord's polite flirtations with her to follow. Listening closely, the Gerudo's head would tilt, round ears straining to hear them over the bustling of unloaded bags from the carriage. He heard talk of a new sport, something like sledding, though the Lord seemed far more interested in boasting his apparent skill at the earliest convenience.

Ganondorf had not accompanied them here under the intention of killing Lord Danton; in fact, he had first set his mind toward humiliation, or some other extraordinary feat that would have the Princess instantly tire of the nobleman's company. But over the days spent travelling here, watching the self assured grins and furtive glances of a man convinced of his own crown, the notions had twisted into something far darker. The ire that sparked in the Gerudo's veins when he saw the other man's hand upon satin gloved fingers, or the horrid stab of resentment he felt whenever Zelda relinquished one of her ancient smiles to the undeserving child, drove Ganondorf to the point of obsession.

He had begun to convince himself it was his bounden duty to do away with the young lord, not only to preserve his own rise, but to scrape together some dignity left to an old foe—the throne was not to be sullied, but neither, he had decided, could Zelda be. Danton dared disturb an eternity in motion, and upon deeming this unforgivable, the Gerudo set about his task meticulously.

On the first morning after their arrival, Lord Danton and the Princess Zelda removed themselves from the fire-warmed halls of the abode early, escorted by two men, as golden eyes watched from a windswept parapet. From a distance he studied them, traversing the steep slopes and narrow cliff faces to stand at the topmost ridge, where to his surprise, the young lord plucked frozen leaves from a large tree. After some instruction, the broad leaf was tossed to the ground, a boot settled upon it firmly before with a gesture and a few parting words, Danton was gliding through the snow in a feat of balance and finesse enough to leave the onlookers clapping after him.

The Gerudo stood shocked by it himself at first, though mostly for the danger of such a sport—had her father known that Zelda would undertake such a dare, it was unlikely she would've been given permission to come at all. However, as he saw the lord bank not far down the pass, coming to a stop to wait by a much tamer slope, some slight relief took hold as the Princess slowly made her way down to meet him. When her own turn came, it was taken slowly and with much guidance, a few wobbles and a tussle of skirts when she toppled over into the snow.

"He's quite talented, you know." came a curious voice from the side, sidling up to watch—he had hardly heard the scholar's approach, taken with the absurd sight as he was.

"As far as hurling oneself down a mountainside  _can_  be measured as talented, Shad, outside of the opinion of Gorons..." Ganondorf turned his head to cock a fiery brow, bulky arms crossed as he allowed a sharp side glared to sweep his bespectacled company. "At any rate, I'd hardly accept that as an intelligent judgement."

Adjusting the tome under his arm, the scholar returned a wry sort of smile, rolling his shoulders with a rise of thin brows.

"I'll admit, it is something of a dangerous hobby, but I suppose his talent could be taken more as luck." he conceded with a light hearted chuckle. "But then, I daresay he is well practised. Since he was a boy, you know... almost every summer he finds the time for it. Just this morning, he was getting in a few early runs before her Highness had risen."

The Gerudo's attention snapped firmly to the wiry man beside him then, a steadfast stare established as his mind began to tick.

"So then, he is quite dedicated to this... sport of his?" he rumbled slowly, bringing thickly gloved fingers to idly toy with his beard. Drawing a slow breath, he eased his questions to seem only mildly interested by this. "With the cold settling in the morning like that and all... Gods above, the boy must be unhinged. How early did he rise?"

"Oh yes, it'll be a wonder if he doesn't fall ill, but I suppose he's hardened to the chill by now." a slight readjustment of his rounded glasses, and Shad smiled at the Princess from afar as she began to find her knack for it. "Crack of dawn, and no later. Had we a cucco to time, I'm certain he'd be halfway up the rise before the first crow. In fact, I should think Lord Danton will be up at sparrows every day, if only to get a good few runs in before playing instructor... in any case, the Princess is certainly in good hands."

An evasive hum was all Ganondorf would offer the scholar as they fell into silence, watching the nobleman from afar as Zelda cautiously tagged along behind him.

That evening, however, the Gerudo would venture out into the cold alone and away from prying eyes, following faded footsteps up to the ridge where they had been and intent on building his own 'talent'. His size and weight did him no favours against the vindictive slip of the ice, but with a few hours of honing his balance and growing accustomed to the arctic bite of snow against tanned flesh, he returned to the mansion with time enough to spare to save crossing paths with Danton's early routine.

It was a welcome surprise when, the next morning, Zelda extended an invitation to the Gerudo to join them on the slopes. It took a fair amount of willpower to decline, eager as he was to distance her attention from her suitor, though thinking on the appalling performance to be given should he be expected to take part, Ganondorf felt it was best to avoid it for the moment. It was perhaps fortunate that he had not hedged his bets on humiliation after all—he himself had never seen the snow before, and certainly, was far lacking in the skills needed to sled standing as Danton did; he had proven as much to himself in private.

That aside, the Lord was already adrift in the sheltered harbour of his patience, and any attempt made on Danton's part to instruct the Gerudo—or anything to allow superior tones to be taken with him at all—were ill advised.

"Tomorrow, perhaps." he had lied.

The flash of disappointment in her eyes did not escape him however, nor did the subtle pleading born of a restrained pout, and this made it somewhat easier to watch Lord Danton escorting her away for their lesson. Ganondorf stood by the iron doors to watch them leave, hands behind his back and a smile forced enough to sit crooked on his lips, though the smirk that twisted it when Zelda glanced back once more was genuine.

During the course of the day, Danton had the men set up red flags to mark an appropriate course for a beginner, highlighting hazards where Zelda needed to be aware of them. The Gerudo watched this from the parapet, carefully writing them to memory even as he grew distracted with the sight of the Princess' rapid improvements.

Over the course of dinner that evening, Ganondorf made sure that her apparent natural talent be noted, and amidst a chorus of agreement she rewarded him one of those ancient smiles he knew so well. A flash of irritation found him when it was cut short, Danton adding that she was 'fast to take direction' with all the subtle arrogance needed to claim credit, though he supposed the light frown that took her was a fortuitous thing.

Again, Ganondorf slipped into the dark of night when the mansion slept soundly, running the full length of the course intended for Zelda. Again and again, he trekked through the snow to glide down it once more, dodging flags and learning to manipulate his lean just so. What he did not possess in natural talent, the Gerudo found he could quickly make up for with magical ability, augmenting himself to provide swift improvement as well. So preoccupied with this discovery, he had barely noticed the rising sun over the mist, narrowly avoiding the encroaching Lord by way of vanishing himself back to his rooms with mere minutes to spare.

This became the norm over the next few days, until the better part of a week had passed. Once again, Zelda requested that Ganondorf join them, though this time she offered him the place of a spectator. Danton did not seem to take issue with this at all, in fact, he also insisted on the matter. Grudgingly, he agreed, though the Gerudo was quite surprised to find the Lord continuing up the pass without them when they came to the top of Zelda's slope.

"He says I ought to do well enough on my own, now." was the only explanation she offered, casting a crystalline gaze over her shoulder as she tightened the leather straps of her boots. "Apparently, I've all the foundation I need. Practice will see me improve from here."

A thin lipped grimace was all he could return to her, gloved fingers rapping upon a bicep.

"I fail to see how slipping down a mountain of a frozen leaf requires a foundation of any kind, Zelda. The very act itself is a mark of  _instability,_ if anything." he scoffed, golden eyes hiding the partial lie as they held to her.

She righted herself, adjusting the leaf beneath her boot as it crunched in the freshly fallen snow. Turning a sly smile his way, the Princess would offer cooly, "Perhaps. But it is more enjoyable than you'd think... A shame you're too prideful to try it. Admittedly, I may have laughed the first few times you fell, but after that, I would've liked to have sled with you before returning home."

His attention snapped to her then, seeking her gaze, but he only caught the very last glimpse of her hair before Zelda was gliding away to spray frost in her wake. Resigned to watching for the moment, the Gerudo traced the path she made, blonde braid whipping out behind her—she cut a graceful figure through the ice, now that she had found her feet for it. She weaved easily throughout the flags, a swish of colour dancing along the jagged line of a cliff, defying the gaping maw of an abyss that, no more than a week prior, would've swallowed her whole in her error.

The Princess did not fear the unknown. She sought to study it, test it, and best it on her own terms—even danger was a welcome hazard, if she felt she could counter it in full. This was, perhaps, why he had come to favour her so; she afforded him new possibilities at every turn, sporting in the challenge.

From the corner of his vision he saw Lord Danton tailing after her, taking the steeper course and twisting about the crevasse with all the prowess of an eagle in flight, and in that moment his musing was cut short. Even from such a distance, the younger man spared a moment to watch the western noble where he stood; a spectator and nothing more. A flourish saw the sled turn sharply, chase given to the Princess as the Gerudo was left behind.

Ganondorf turned from the slope with a sneer.

That evening, he checked and rechecked the placing of every flag on Zelda's run, and once he was finally convinced that nobody else would be awake to see, the Gerudo set about rearranging them at certain intervals he had carefully chosen; subtle, though crucial. A path slick with ice was carefully inspected, measured, and the last flags were arranged to compensate for the detour. Twenty paces were counted out from the precipice, and a mound of snow built up by large hands on the last arch of the slope—just as it swerved around the crevasse.

He returned to the mansion to wait for dawn, and not a wink of sleep graced him as he eyed the horizon eagerly, listening for movement in the halls and laying out his clothes. When dawn drew near, dressed and ready, he slipped from his chambers with all the stealth a King of Thieves was once famed for. At the bottom of the staircase, a careful pause was given to assure that nobody witnessed him leaving, and with a sinful smirk he left through iron doors to greet the harsh morning chill.

Forty minutes passed as the sun escaped the misty horizon to cast a glow to the mountain side, and even from his perch on the ridge, Ganondorf couldn't help but ignore the glory of the sunrise—golden eyes fixated upon the mansion and the silhouette that had emerged from it. When Lord Danton was close enough that the crunching of his boots was apparent, the Gerudo rose to step into his line of sight, and Zelda's suitor could hardly hide his surprise.

A hint of nervousness played on the Lord's features, though it was quickly diffused with a smile; a casual conversation about not being able to sleep, and how if they were returning the day after, Ganondorf might as well give sledding a shot.

Provided nobody saw him, that is.

Glancing down at the slope, Danton offered him a nod, gesturing lazily with a half smile. "I usually manage a complete run most mornings, before anyone wakes... It does well to get the blood pumping early, I say." almost spitefully, he added with a growing grin, "Zelda certainly seems to have developed a taste for it. It'd almost seem a shame if she couldn't come with me every year now, wouldn't you think?"

Gritting his teeth, Ganondorf swallowed down his first reply, and reminding himself of the plan with a grimace, he then forced it into a sceptical sort of smirk. A fiery brow twitched, and he made the slightest shrug, glancing down at the flags below.

"Well, I don't imagine it's rather difficult to do. Another week and I'm sure the Princess would rival you on that steeper slope." With a dismissive chuckle, he tailored his features to something more light hearted, "A few trips more, and I should think she'd have you trailing behind  _her_."

The corner of the Lord's mouth ticked to break his easygoing expression, and that was the only cue he needed to give. Rolling his shoulders to hide it, as if caught by a sudden chill, Danton gave a hollow laugh and pinned the larger man with a prideful eye.

"She is talented, to be sure, but all flattery aside, I think she still has quite a way to go. In any case," it was his turn to force a smile now. "If there were nothing to it at all, I hardly think one would need instruction."

"So, if I were to attempt Zelda's run without your  _priceless wisdom_ ," it took quite a bit of effort for the Gerudo to hold an incredulous scowl, "Or better yet, if I were to race you down this slope to the mansion, say, I would surely lose?"

"Fall to your death, more likely." the younger man scoffed then, amused by the suggestion until the stare he received made him falter. The Lord's features quickly reformed into a frown. "You can't be serious...?"

Reaching into a fur lined pocket, the Gerudo would remove a shimmer of silver in the form of a cut gem—two hundred rupees, to be exact, as he held it up for inspection. An evil smirk twisted across his mouth then. "If you win, it's a silver in your pocket for the trouble."

The temptation was enough to prompt a step forward, but sceptical, Danton would hesitate long enough to hear the alternative. Arching a brow, and concealing the haughty grin worn when laying down a fixed bet, he would ask, "...And if I lose?"

It rumbled from his chest far more easily than it should have, though he levelled the Lord a flat stare when it did.

"You forfeit Zelda's hand."

The burst of laughter very nearly made him recoil, but Ganondorf inclined his head low and waited for the idiot to fall for his rise—they were, at face value, steep odds to play. But, in a fair turn, it was a losing hand he held. Golden eyes resisted the urge to flicker down toward his ace in the hole, sharpening instead into a glare as he snarled to silence the mirth.

"Silence, boy! Is it a race, or not?"

Shaking his head to free himself of the last of it, the Lord chuckled to rub the back of his neck, still grinning wide when he came to nod. "Stranger things have happened in the pursuit of women, I suppose..." with a sniff to inhale deeply, he let a confident and content sigh roll out to fog. "Very well... But I won't be blamed if you don't stick close to those flags."

Within a few minutes, the pair had trekked up the mountainside a ways to collect the iced over leaves, and were back on their marks to undertake the daring wager. Cocking his head toward the Gerudo, Danton offered what could only be described as a punch-worthy grin.

"I'll make this fair, old man. I'll give you a head start of about twenty seconds or so, though you had better make them count. After that, I— "

Ganondorf did not leave him enough time to finish, shooting off down the hill without a second thought, and much to the young Lord's shock, they counted  _heavily_. Though it pained him to miss the paling shock no doubt sprawled across Danton's visage, he was not so cocky as to risk losing his focus now—magic could steer him steady to an extent, but the Gerudo was in truth quite unskilled at the sport.

Once some momentum was gained however, as the Western lord began to duck and weave throughout the first dozen flags, a brief glance over his shoulder revealed a scowling Danton had recovered and was already powering closely after him. It was vital that Ganondorf stay ahead for the first third of the run, but already, his tenuous lead was steadily being cut.

After half a mile of swerving and driving under the morning sun, round ears caught the shout above the rushing snow, "You lying bastard, you have been at it after all!"

And true enough, the only reason the Western Lord could keep his lead was by sheer familiarity with this particular run. This advantage was holding him in good stead so far, though as speeds picked up, even magic wouldn't buffer the entirety of his weight to steer with—it was close, so very close, and he had sled down this next three hundred meters almost fifty times now.

But out of all, this was the only one that mattered.

Golden eyes glanced back to catch the Lord at his heels, a mere twenty meters behind, if that. Leaning back, Ganondorf began to slow as they descended toward the disturbed path, careful so as not to make it obvious or allow Danton to think he'd lost his nerve. He was so close the Gerudo could very nearly feel the heat of his breath as he pulled back for the last stretch, and then, nearly hurling himself to one side, Ganondorf swerved sharply. The edge of his leaf dug into the snow with a sharp hiss, ploughing into the mound of snow he'd built the previous evening and bringing him to an abrupt halt as Danton shot passed at a terrifying speed.

Seconds later, sailing over the ice and slipping by that false fatal curve, the Lord was high above the crevasse with a deafening scream that threatened to shake the very mountain. Golden eyes followed him sharply as he fell, the echo following him down into the mists to be devoured whole, muting his cry and censoring the sure fire sound of bones crunching against the rock and ice some hundred feet below.

With a snicker, the Gerudo set about carefully levelling the mound he'd built, and clambered back up the mountain with haste to gather up the flags and undo any trace of his false route. He slid down with a mental count, straying side to side to replace them in the correct positions, about a hundred meters up from the deadly ice patch. Sledding down to the mansion with a the casual air of a morning stroll, Ganondorf was quick to discard the icy leaf and was back in his chambers before the Princess had stirred.

When breakfast was served, there was no great alarm at the fact that Lord Danton was not among them, as all in company knew well of his morning runs out on the mountainside, and assumed he had simply lost track of the time.

Relishing the warmth of the china as slender fingers wrapped around it, the Princess spooned some sugar into her tea and shot the Gerudo a heavy lidded glance. "Today is your last chance to join me in a run, you know. You'll regret it if you miss the chance. I'm sure you'll be good at it, Lord Ganondorf; despite what Danton says, if I've taken it up this quickly, I'm sure you'll have no trouble."

Offering a curt, though by this point tired, smile that bordered on a grimace, Ganondorf would offer a pointed glance before he resumed buttering his roll. "If I didn't know better, Princess, I would think you wanted to make a fool of me yourself, rather than let him do it for you."

"Nonsense. You know just as well as I that the snow is a novelty to us both." her chin lifted in a dismissive way, as she brought the cup to her lips, pausing only to add, "Clearly you need an excuse to allow yourself a little fun here and there, I just thought I might offer you one. We could make a race of it, if you'd prefer competition?"

The Gerudo stopped to peer at her with a quizzical furrowing of his brow, knife halted halfway between the table and the roll as he stared. A coincidence, but one that had caught him in a tell, and he moved to cover it quickly with a look of feigned surprise. "Compete against  _you_? Surely not. I would lose."

This time, however, it was not a lie.

The chime of her laughter rang out again like a sobering bell, only moments before a rather frantic Shad came bursting through the door; barely managing to catch his glasses as they fell from his nose for the sudden halt.

"Princess Zelda! Oh, there's been a most terrible accident, you see, you must come quickly! It's Lord Danton!" he spluttered through his panic, blinking rapidly for his own disbelief of the matter.

Zelda straightened, taken aback to blink as she placed her cup to the table once more, slowly rising to stand. Ganondorf mimicked her, at a lost for how else to react to such news at first—the sorrowful, stoically mournful role would come later of course, but that was the part he was more fitting to play. At present, it was rather hide to hide the dark glee shining in his eyes.

Holding a hand to her chest, the Princess urged him on, "What has happened?" but then a new level of shock seemed to descend upon her, piecing together what had likely occurred. "...Gods above, is he still with us, Shad? Do tell me he's  _alive_?" Already her eyes were glossed, at the ready to shed tears if need be.

"Yes, but only by the skin of his teeth, so to speak... He's badly injured, though the ravine wasn't quite as deep as we feared. He won't be sledding again this year, nor at all if his leg doesn't set. The medic says we ought to have a hard time moving him, given the nature of his wounds. I'm afraid we may not be heading back to the Proper for a good month, at least..." the worried scholar barely waited for them to follow, turning on his heel to bound off and alert anyone else that had yet to hear.

When she was sure he was out of earshot, the Princess gave a sigh, bringing a hand to her forehead to rub tiredly. Ganondorf slumped back into his seat, gritting his jaw for the accursed luck of the man, but casting a wary eye toward Zelda decided better to say something comforting—or at the very least, less incriminating. He knew enough charms to wipe the man's memory, at least, when they retrieved him.

"A cautionary tale to your budding enthusiasm for the sport, Princess... But at the very least, he lives yet."

"Pity." she mused, a frustrated edge to her voice as she glanced back over her shoulder—the glassy eyes were gone. "After all the trouble you took, I was rather hoping you'd succeed."

 


	15. Shallow

Many whispered warmly of the beauty about her, caught awestruck, as she descended the stairs.

Alabaster skin compared to porcelain for its flawless complexion, its softness comparable only to the newly budding petals of spring. An airless grace moved her, posture trained to tapering curves by the most talented tailor's stitches in a bid to showcase the femininity she could possess.

Gold spun hair pinned and weaved through filigree and gemstone, outshining them with its lustre to bounce by the hollow of her neck. A subtle invitation, daring the imagination to conjure visions of one's lips pressed there softly, though the aloof sway of an earring spitefully filled the space beside her jaw.

The silence of her steps; a spectre upon the stairwell, as satin gloved fingers ran their patient course down the balustrade as if it were a suitor's arm. The fragile coyness of her smile, seeming half a mirage upon stoic features carved to enchant the fancy of lords and peasants alike.

She was a vision of her mother before her, all eyes in company that evening fixed upon the Princess that should have been Queen, hopeful that she would choose her husband from among them tonight.

Even so, there was no whisper of her eyes. In truth, few dared even track the direction of her gaze, fearful to have it fall upon their own. As her attention swept the room, others averted their stares, fleeting glances chanced back to study the rest of her once such scrutiny returned to them passed.

They spoke stronger still of flesh and and the warming tonality of her voice, the delicate visage she bore, her elegance of form. They called desperate attention to her hair and her gestures, praising the vessel for the freshness of beauty it presented. A marvellous shell, they reasoned, to be envied and pursued.

Such shallow things provided wonderful distraction, after all, hiding the weariness of long dead eyes and the broken soul—ages old—that would puppeteer them.

There was no beauty to be found in such sullen eyes as hers. Only regret, fear, and despair for something lost lifetimes ago.

Zelda did not peruse the men gathered at her feet for a Husband, despite the delusional optimism of her courtiers—she did, however, search their silhouettes for a King.

She swept the room distantly, awash with pale tones so painfully stark beside the burnt umber caught in the peripheral of her mind's eye. Oceanic blues and earthy hazels darted to avoid the cut of her gaze, with no hint of defiant gold to stare boldly back. A sea of doublets quilted the space where she wished to find the hardened steel plating of armour; silks insulted her with softness where she yearned for leather. Crops of blonde and brunette shades filled the room like a field of wheat, her palms itching with the urge to spark them ablaze and see the hint of wildfire crimson among them.

Too many times she had travelled down these steps to find him absent. Too long had he kept her waiting, taunting her slumber with fitful dreams and omens of false urgency.

He was not there, and Zelda had not the energy left to pretend there was any man here who could replace his importance in both hers and Hyrule's fate.

The crowd clamoured after her, pleading to break their praise, when the Princess turned back to ascend the stairs alone.

Her bodily beauty would've seemed savourless against the brilliance of her eyes, had they fallen upon the King that valued, instead, her aching soul.

 


	16. Quidnunc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "One who must always know what is going on around them"

A bleak and rainy evening held the castle quietly in its misty grip, subdued with silent halls and faintly hidden murmurs as the residents cleaved closely to their fireplaces. With so little stirring, conditions ripe for her inquisitive spell, the Princess sat in her study alone like one of the pale, dainty spiders to be found lovingly entwined about her late mother’s roses in the gardens.

For quite a number of days, now, Zelda had left the door to her study ajar in poignant wait, while she wrote alone with a patient hand of the legacy left to her. A part of her heart had expected that the very act might lure him, with a sense that only the Gerudo could be attuned, to the nightmarish curlicues she had penned upon parchment to document her dreams of late. Dreams of him, of course; visions betraying the same age old intentions. That much the Princess knew he would already be aware of, given his recent scarcity. After a great deal of fidgeting and pottering about, shuffling papers, and even the idle hum of an old lullaby to sweeten the bait, she found herself at a loss for why the man had not yet come to darken her doorway as he so often used to.

Having done everything she surreptitiously could, drawing upon the fatal curiosity and connection they shared to have Ganondorf come poking about—hardly able to help himself when lashed by the siren-like call of destiny—Zelda had been disappointed to find her trap remained unsprung.

And unable to keep proper tabs on the wolf amongst them dressed as lamb, especially since he had begun to disappear for suspicious lengths of time, Zelda had grown rather restless.

So now, she sat like the spider, in the middle of a luminous web, giving tentative little jerks to this strand and that. The reach of it spread all throughout the tired brickwork of her castle, criss-crossing every hall and draped across Ganondorf’s regular haunts, whilst the Princess perched upon her hardwood chair to listen carefully for the tell-tale twang of prey; wily and patient.

Was he in his chambers? A delicate pull upon the silk. He was not, and the corner of her painted lips ticked. Pointed ears heard the creaking of a door echo distantly down the corridor, but her out flung filament traced no footfalls approaching her. She traced her way through the aisles of the grand archives, steady and rhythmic to pluck the line there searchingly—fanned senses made out the languid shuffling of scholars and librarians, and still further out into her home did Zelda’s mind venture. She let a strand of silk descend the carpeted runner of a stairway, tread upon brazenly by boots that did not belong to her tanned prey.

Her probing thoughts took her to glide through a parlour to note the chattering of the Lords’ wives, softly flushed and cupping their glasses to both deny and fuel rumour as they never did, clear cut and ladylike, in front of her. A tremble caught her attention with a jolt, only to realise her father boisterously kept a select few companions entertained within the dining hall; drunken and mirthful and none the wiser to any danger that could befall them by poisoned chalice or an assassin’s blade.

Not even in the misted gardens, splayed out underneath the bleak sky to drink and dance with the soft patter of rain, bore any hint of her quarry. Ganondorf seemed a ghost to her, fleeting apparition and mystery to fade into the rolling fog. She could find him nowhere. All at once her prismatic weave seemed no more than dull, dusty cobweb; castle dead and empty to offer no crumb to her hunger.

And then the rich rumble of him came drifting from parted door, a sliver of shadow watching venomous fangs gleam and twitch in wait of him to be caught.

“A novel charm, Princess. A pity I make use of it myself, or surely, you would have caught me by now… But you cannot know everything.”

Gone, when crystalline eyes shot after him, barely an echo left of his accent when she stumbled pale and urgent out into the hall. Gone, too, were the scrawlings she’d so lovingly prepared to tempt him with, hideous hieroglyphs of what both of them knew was to come.

A thief at heart, she smiled grimly to herself, tired eyes tracing the spare parchment she had yet to mark. But, once he had read well of her visions, he would know the poison hidden in her words, the sting eating away to fester until he succumbed. Such intimate whispers of defeat never did sit well with the Gerudo, and if only once, there would always come a hand reaching out unsure in the darkness to find hers, if only for the slim chance she might lead him to salvation before his focus could be regained.

She would wait for his secrets to come spilling out; dust from a withered husk she dared to believe was still beating in his chest. When that old attachment drew him back to her, she would strike, to know exactly what went on inside that head of his.

Zelda  _needed_  to know if that heart still beat for her, before she decided just how she was to cut it out.


	17. Wiser

The Queen sat stoic within the empty chamber, unmoved and seeming so similar to the statues of the Goddesses above her throne.

Like marble, her pale features bore the winding cracks proudly, defined by their chaotic pattern as if lightning splayed out across her flesh. They were harsh against the softness of her, linear and bold to clash with the delicate frame she bore. Brunette tresses framed her face, as fine as an angel’s hair but refusing the halo of light, lessened in their luster. A half-golden gaze stared ahead without seeing, no longer the full crystalline blue she was famed for; irises evoking a mixed horizon at twilight.

Twilight was the nature of Zelda’s existence now, a blending of the light and the darkness, to match the state of her Kingdom itself.

A black fingernail traced the rim of a wineglass as it rested on the arm of her throne, idle and negligent of the liquid it held as she listened to the voice inside her head.

_Drink, Zelda… Savour the fruit of your lands. Do not waste them as your ancestors did, and take for granted the providence you were blessed with._

The corner of her mouth quirked into the ghosting of a smile, though she made no move to accommodate. Manipulation had served him well in the past, perhaps, but it had long worn out its usefulness upon her. She was always gentle in her reminder, knowing how old the habit was—it was Power’s nature to elevate itself.

So rare it was that Ganondorf did not play the role of her captor, Zelda found herself forgiving how easily he fell into the trappings of old routine.

“For one who spent so long parading themselves as Godlike,” she mused aloud, inwardly focused as her tone echoed about the chamber, “You have a terrible habit of pining for mortal things.”

Her echoes faded, and silence—both internal and outside of her mind—reigned for a short time.

_…And you do not? Legends of old would tell of a Goddess who traded her divinity for a mortal existence. You live as proof that even the heavens can sometimes covet the Earth._

“There is a great difference between indulgence and necessity, Ganondorf.” She answered with a breath of amusement, plucking up the stem of the glass to hold it aloft before her. “It’s far too late now for you to learn the lessons of ‘grass being greener’.”

A wry chuckle stole some of the eminence from his voice, hinting of the man he’d once been, and Zelda’s eyes closed to capture a glimpse of that image behind her eyelids.

_I had no grass to begin with, Zelda. My indulgence was **born**  of necessity._

She studied the crimson liquid as the dim light filtered through it, thoughtful as she felt him stirring inside of her with want. For all his power, for all he’d gained on his pathway to godhood, she held in her fragile flesh and bones the ability to deny him everything. He knew bodily sensation as she allowed him to, inviting him inward as a host. He felt small joys and sorrows borrowed from her heart, having long sacrificed his own to hunger and hate. Even the simplest of pleasures, a fleeting taste of fine wine, would be lost to him were it not for her mercy.

“And you still don’t, drifting between heaven and earth, hardly able to reach into either.”

A small hum of his resentment ran bitter through her bones, but the Queen weathered it gratefully, soothing the pang of regret that fluttered alongside it.

_I wear the price of my mistakes. I simply linger in reflection, so they will not be made again._

“You could easily push forward from here.” She offered suddenly, stoic as she felt him recoil within for a slight shock. “My body is the last anchor that holds you from your ascension. To allow yourself to slip away into the darkness now might well grant you the pinnacle of your demonic origins, and all the potency such magic could manifest.”

He did not respond. Briefly, Zelda searched deep for any sign of his temptation to do so, but held her tongue as her counterpart considered her suggestion carefully. Whatever thoughts he entertained, he blocked expertly from her mind. She needn’t hear them to know what they were.

Ganondorf was closer now to the Gods than he had ever been, far flung from the mere mortal he was when born into this world. But, even as he teetered on the edge of the divine and the demonic, he craved the things he’d known as a man and feared the loss of ascending beyond them.

Zelda knew the game of fate would continue. The price of his victory was far too steep, even for him. It was only when face with the final choice, when Ganondorf stood upon the precipice of what he was and would be, that his ambitions stilled and he found a threshold he dared not cross just yet.

Wisdom consoled Power’s throes as it approached the final rung on the ladder it sought to climb, and smiled knowingly when instead of achieving true victory, it entertained conceding defeat.

Power ascended. It did not plateau.

So she had called a temporary draw, and now worked to help him reset the board, ready for the next game to come.

“I am mortal,” she smiled, a warm thing to break the pallid image of her as little more than a statue. “This body will die one day, and your anchor will be gone. You may linger between light and dark until that day comes, but when my light begins to fade, you will need to make your choice. Grasp victory, or be reborn with me in your loss.”

 _Please,_ he beckoned quietly from the corner of her mind; drunk upon the fruity scent her nose allowed him to perceive, with a thirst only her mercy could quench.  _Please, drink._

“You’ve grown wiser.” She said, lifting the glass to her lips. 


	18. Danger

She ran as fast as bare feet could carry her.

 A white knuckled fist held the hem of her nightgown firmly and high out of the way, so as not to stumble. The pendant around her neck bounced and beat against the bone of her chest, striking the valley of her breasts in timed strokes. Her golden hair was beginning to unravel from its loose bun in the movement, far removed as she was from the restful evening she’d imagined this would be.

 The light emanating from Zelda’s hand spoke volumes of the danger in their midst, though her panic wasn’t shared with anyone else in the castle. Most everyone else, at this hour of night, had retired to remain painfully unaware of her distress. Nobody would have expected to see the Queen tearing down the carpeted runner between her chambers and the nursery, when she ought to have been in bed for days to come.

 But, ashen and wobbly on her feet, she pushed through the protest of her body to defy the frailty in which a long labour left her. It was impossible to tell what drove her more fiercely, caught between a mother’s instinct and the age old call of Wisdom, but even in her state she was sure she’d never moved faster.

 A prayer went up with every ragged breath to stay fate a moment more.

 She had sacrificed so much to mother this child, a precious daughter, and bring her into the world alone. An unmarried queen bearing a rounded stomach, she had weathered the looks, and endured the whispers. She suffered the judgments and saw the bedrock of respect slowly crumble under the weight of disapproval. Her father surely turned in his grave for her choices. The world was unforgiving of her mistakes.

 Relatives were quick to rally for her throne, but she was quicker still. Spurned were the would-be husbands that sought to pity her misfortune and salvage her for the price of power. She wrestled with the suggestions of abdication and subdued them. She had dodged all the hands that opportunistically sought to snatch the crown from her brow.

 Zelda had protected that which was hers, and hummed her daughter a lullaby as the infant lay curled and wailing upon her chest, from the womb into her mother’s arms.

 They could not take her crown, and he would not take her child.

 The door was ajar when she reached it, frantic hand pushing it aside as she stumbled, breathless, into the nursery. Fate was cruel, for the weakness of her condition struck her heavily once the threshold was crossed, and her legs finally gave out. Her palms and knees burned by the rug as she fell, halted now to kneel as if the Gods wished her to beg forgiveness for her sin. The holy mark on her hand pulsed with a violent glow to draw the same response from his, lighting up the darkness of the room.

 He stood with his back to her, towering over the white lace and satin of the cradle, cut of a sinister silhouette that seemed like a stain against the softness of her baby’s chamber. Crystalline eyes swept glazed over the fire of his hair, darkened the colour of blood by the shadows. All was silent, and it seemed as if time had frozen—pointed ears did not hear her daughter’s cry, nor even catch her stirring to the Gerudo’s presence.

 She barely breathed a whisper when she spoke. “Ganondorf, please… Of all the things you could try to take from me, do not let it be her…”

 In the dimming light of his hand, she saw thick fingers twitch by his side and felt her heart sink lower.

The gravel of his voice was almost lost on the quiet tone he returned to her. 

“You are hardly in any position to stop me, Zelda.”

 She knew. By Gods, she knew. Even in full health, there was little she could have done, if that was what the man chose. Her nails dug into the fiber of the rug harshly, and in the darkness, she allowed a hot tear to run down her cheek unchecked. There was no reason to hide it. He had grown too used to the sight to be swayed by something so immaterial as a broken heart and glassed eyes.

It had not stopped him from returning to his desert, when she refused his proposal. It had not disbanded his mounting army, when she revealed she was with child. It did not erase the holy relic from the backs of their hands, when she beseeched him to sign the treaties and allow peace a little longer.

She said nothing more, hanging her head as she lost the will to look at him.

Gingerly, he removed one hand from his side, reaching into the cradle with caution not to wake the sleeping infant. A whisper and a flicker of his blessing, and they could be gone; Zelda knew it as well as he. The babe’s ruddy cheek was soft against the harshness of his own calloused fingertips, the slightest stirring from the newborn giving him pause to watch her. Slowly, almost hesitant, Ganondorf turned his head to one side and let a heavy sigh roll from his nostrils. From the corner of his golden eye, sharper than hers in the dim light, he studied her fallen form with a pathos Zelda would never see.

“Give her a name befitting her Gerudo blood.”

Their daughter stirred with a small wail, the small touch enough to disturb her from her slumber.

Zelda felt a sob hitch in her own throat, too, when she realized their child knew her father had gone.


End file.
